Further Adventures of Tanya the Evil
by Aguy.SB
Summary: Enemy and victim of Being X (aka, 'god'), reincarnated salaryman, child soldier, military prodigy, and victor of the Great War. What will you do next? Start to takeover a fantasy version of Rome after being reborn (again). Arc 1: Gate (complete). Reposted from Spacebattles.
1. Winning the War

Semi Important AN: This is a archive/story-only version of a quest I run on Spacebattles called Further Adventures of Tanya the Evil. For those unfamiliar, quests are interactive stories where the author presents options at the end of each post/chapter for the readers to vote on. Kind of like those old choose-your-own adventure books you might have read as a kid, but even more dynamic as there are often elements of pen-and-paper RPG systems used too.

Especially in the beginning of this, I'll be posting little Author's Notes (prefaced _AN:_ ) explaining some of how a quest works. Those go away mostly after chapter 4 or so, if they annoy you.

If you want to read the most up-to-date version, vote on what happens next, or see omakes, maps, and character sheet information, you can search for the Spacebattles thread of the same title. This version has only the most minor of edits; readers may notice that some of the writing conventions are slightly different from the standard novel because of that.

Currently, we have finished the Gate: Thus the JSDF Fought There arc, and are onto a Dresden-verse arc.

Obviously, I don't own any of Saga of Tanya the Evil, Gate: Thus the JSDF Fought There, or Dresden.

* * *

 **Post 1: Character and World**

You are Tanya von Degurechaff, reincarnated salaryman, child soldier, military prodigy. You held off an entire company of enemy mages solo and became an Ace the day you were commissioned. You were nine years old. You made Lt. Colonel on martial merit before you were a teenager. Commander of the Imperial 203rd Air Mage Battalion, you have been the tip of the spear, first in and last out for the bloodiest battles in the most vicious war in your new world's history.

Under your leadership, outnumbered a thousand to one, your battalion broke Dacia. You led a handful of men and wiped out the Republic's command, paving the way to their defeat. You ensured Imperial success in Africa, and performed a Reconnaissance-in-Force through Moscow itself. You dueled over the Kingdom Channel, used nationalism to fight communism in Union territories, and hunted partisans in Norden. Returning to the Eastern front, you spearheaded the blocking force which led to the Union's defeat in detail.

The devil of the Rhine. The Ace of Aces. Names you earned. That you fought for, bled for. Once a pacifistic if pragmatic Japanese salaryman, you find that you have grown to _like_ combat. And you swear that one day, _one day_ , you will defeat that insufferable bastard that claims to be God, Being X.

No one has ever accused you of lacking ambition.

Now, in May of 1927, you are faced with a choice. With Union forces defeated, it is the perfect time to get decent, if not amazing, peace terms. Your own forces are overstretched, at the limit of the capacity of the supplies. A push to Moscow is, if not impossible, certainly far less likely to be successful than you or the Imperial military can tolerate.

The civilian leadership want to force another battle, believing that General von Zettour and the Imperial Military can pull of enough of a victory to force even more advantageous terms from the Union, hopefully staving off financial collapse in the future. On the other hand, you're fairly certain your own Salamander Combat Group will be the tip of the spear going in, and the rearguard when the advance invariably fails and forces a retreat. But, how much do you care about your men, really? Will you push for peace? Pursue your growing bloodlust in never-ending war? Or just continue to follow orders?

You have options … and you have made up your mind.

It is clear that civilian leadership has become the greatest threat to the Empire. And there's a solution to that: stage a terrorist attack during a high-level meeting between civilian and military leadership, ensuring the military leadership makes it out alive. Frame internal anarchists and war-protesters. With the civilians gone, and the military assuming temporary control, peace can be achieved before the Empire fatally over-reaches. All for the sake of this damned war ending sooner.

But all things come to an end, this war included. You too come to an end. An end, and a new beginning…

You died. Again. After yet another argument with Being X, you ended up in a more traditional fantasy Empire. Everything was going great, and you were a well-respected mage. Then, the morons invaded Japan and the JSDF invaded back.


	2. A Brave New World

**Post 2: A Brave New World**

September 23, 1929

You are happy as can be. The War's been over for a bit over two years. As for how it ended, well, you try not to even _think_ about that. You are at peace with your actions, but you doubt all of your fellow soldiers would be so copacetic with your actions. They might use words like 'treason'. Or 'terrorism'. Or other nasty words (potentially beginning with T) which would spell nothing but _terrible_ news for you. That said, those morons that made up the Empire's civilian leadership _had_ to be let go, terminated with prejudice. Otherwise the war would likely _still_ be ongoing, assuming the Empire managed to last _this_ long before being defeated and dismantled.

Hell, you even got another medal for "heroic actions in protecting members of the High Command in relation to the anarchist attack on May 21st, 1927." You're pretty sure Rerugen suspects you, but that upright moralist doesn't have any proof and knows better than to attack you, the Hero of the Empire, without it.

As the Empire recovers, teetering on the precipice of economic failure, tensions remain high with the Kingdom. The Republic is upset by the fact that all of the disputed border territories are now Imperial, and suffer under the yoke of significant concessions. The Union is trying by means overt and covert to push their communist ideals back into the nationalistic regions which you helped found.

All of which is _great_ for you. After all, without some tension, the military wouldn't need you to serve as the nation's watchdog. Without civil unrest, the politicians wouldn't want to keep you close to appease the population, and in extremis, put them down if necessary. But with these stressors, you are _golden_. And thus, finally on track with your life, you are happy. It's even your birthday tomorrow!

Quickly promoted in the aftermath of the war to full Colonel, you were re-assigned to central as the commanding officer of the entire air-mage training program, and serve on several important military planning committees on military doctrine, allowing you to continue to shape things and getting important face time in front of top military brass. You're the youngest colonel in Imperial history, and you fully plan on making general. Even Marshal isn't out of the question.

Which is why you're so _fucking_ _pissed off_ with this _incompetent drunkard_ in front of you.

"Captain. Let me see if I understand this correctly. You, after getting drunk on duty, decided that it would be a good idea to drive yourself. Your _assigned driver_ objected, at which point you took the keys to the vehicle at _gunpoint_. You proceeded to hit two other cars in the staff motor pool _before leaving the parking lot_. Finally, you drove your car through the wall into the Air-Mobility Device maintenance warehouse. You fled while your car caught fire _resulting in the destruction of the warehouse_ and the destruction of an entire battalion's worth of AMDs!" You keep your cool only through the greatest of efforts, eyes blazing in your anger. You see Viktoriya, your adjutant, off to the side, wincing, prepared to intervene if you truly lost it.

If it were still wartime, you'd have simply shot this arrogant, feckless jackass, sparing the gene pool his no-doubt congenital idiocy. But now, in peacetime, things were different. Especially considering this lump of brainless meat is the Imperial Treasurer's nephew. _Fucking civilians_. They can't find their dicks if you cut it off and put it in their hands. And this so called _captain_ is so useless you know the only difference between him and a civilian is how his uncle's patronage bought his commission.

"Look, Rusted Silver, it's not such a big deal. I'm sure my uncle, the Treasurer, can get it all replaced right away," the jackass brayed. As you stand up, you can see Viktoriya's mouth drop. You _hear_ your staff sergeant wincing in the other room as you walked with careful, precise steps to stand in front of the moron. Both of them had served in the 203rd. Both know your beliefs on familiarity, that it is earned in blood and service, the greatest prize you could give your men. Both know that this _captain_ certainly _hadn't_ earned it.

And the captain learned this fact with swift brutality as you swept his legs with a kick. Spinning, you bring the sheathe of your sword up, holding it with two hands, and _slammed_ the point of it into the captain's solar plexus as he floated midair, smashing him into the ground. As he curls into the fetal position, gasping and retching, you kick him onto his back, pressing the sheathe into his throat to get his attention. Staring down at him, you know what he now sees.

Not some fey, waifish blond teen, growth permanently stunted by limited food in the orphanage, then limited rations on the front. No. He sees who you _truly_ are. The Devil of the Rhine.

"Captain. You will call me Sir, or Colonel von Degurechaff. That was not the correct answer. Captain Serebryakov, perhaps you can help the captain. What should he have said?"

"Colonel, the captain should have said, 'Sir, No Excuse, Sir!'," Viktoriya answers.

"Well done, Captain Serebryakov," you reply deceptively calmly. "Now Captain, perhaps you can try again?"

"W-What?" he stutters. This, right here, is how you know Being X is no god. Anyone capable of suffering the creation of _this_ wretched creature cannot be divine. You draw back your foot, and swiftly kick out, driving your steel-toed boot into his side in the soft area unprotected by his ribs. He writhes in pain, making a thin keeling sound and gasping for air.

" _Captain._ That was, _once again_ , the wrong answer. Now, try again, and _get it right this time,_ " you emphasize. "I'm waiting," you continue as he seems to having trouble over his tears and gasping.

"S-s-sir, no ex-excuse, S-s-sir," he says over his sobs.

"Barely adequate, but it's obvious that's the best you _ever_ manage," you drawl. "Let me tell you how things will be, _Mr._ Ingomar. You will sign this letter of intent to resign due to medical concerns. The sergeant will escort you to Dr. Soren, who will sign medical discharge papers. You will laud my mercy to all and sundry, singing my praises to your fellow overly-bred useless fools, and most particularly to your uncle." You wait a moment, but no reply is forthcoming.

That's it. You're going to find who was responsible for training this idiot, bust them to private, and stick them in the coldest, wettest, shittiest posting you can find. Perhaps a tower on the tundra in Norden, watching the shore, built specifically to Africa's watchtower standard so it's particularly cold.

He finally gets the idea that he's meant to speak again.

"W-why?" he grits out. This is obviously a plot by Being X. It's trying to frustrate you to the extent that you actually _pray_ for understanding and strength. Because this fool's idiocy is so _unbelievably absurd_ it must be the result of 'divine' intervention. Once again, you draw your leg back, this time reinforcing yourself with a bit of magic to hit harder. Lashing out, you kick his side with your instep, flipping him a full 360 degrees before he crashes onto his back again.

"Again, _wrong answer!_ " you say when he's finally recovered enough to understand. "But to answer your asinine question, you will ensure I hear nothing wrong from your direction because if you _don't_ I'll release the other paper you'll be signing. The confession that this was a purposeful attempt to sabotage our great nation, undertaken after hearing your Uncle's private conversations about the military and its place.

"And should you have any _further_ questions, you will do that because otherwise, you will die having tried to assault me in my officer after being questioned whether this was part of some conspiracy! Is that explanation simple enough for you, dummass? Now _what do you say!_ "

"Sir, y-yes, sir," he sobs.

" _Well done,_ Mr. Ingomar," you sarcastically praise.

As the lump leaves your office crying, you have this vague feeling of déjà vu.

* * *

The next day, you're waiting, dressed in your green service uniform and mantle at a crowded station for a train headed towards the main Air-Mage barracks where you plan on dining with your comrades in the officer's mess. As the train pulls in, you sense someone rushing at your back and pirouette, dodging their push. As your attention focuses, you see Ingomar stumble past you, turning towards you, wide-eyed in surprise that he missed you and will now face the speeding train he hope to push you into. He overbalances and begins to fall towards the tracks as you stand there, your mantle fluttering with the remains of your rapid dodge.

 _Oh shit_ , you think. _I recognize this moment_.

And then, as you're lost in memory, Ingomar catches the fluttering edge of your mantle, pulling you off the platform to your doom.

 _"Being X! You Bastard!"_ you scream as time freezes.

"Ha- **h** A- _H_ A- **ha** - _H_ **a** -a ** _H_** " that creepy bastard laughs out, each exhalation coming from a different mouth which he's decided to puppet. "And now we come full circle. Have you learned anything, _Tanya-_ _ **chan**_?" he mocks.

"Since when. Since you put me in this _ridiculous_ body? Of course. I fought. I killed. I bled. _I won_ ," you snarl, eyes blazing with zeal.

"And did you find faith?"

"You know the answer to that."

"Even if that means you simply _end_?"

" _Even then_ ," you declare.

"And yet, you did _my_ work on this Earth," Being X baits you. "Turning the Union from godless communism."

"If so it was incidental to my own goals," you assert. "I did _my own_ work."

"Ah. Well, it seems our game comes to an end. And though I haven't won, with you headed towards oblivion _you won't either_."

"Really? By my counting, I _did_ win." Now you have that same half-mad smile on your face that you wore when burning Arraine, when slaughtering divisions of Dacian troops, when raiding Moscow. "After all, _I'm not the one who cheated_. Right, Being X? How does it feel to have to cheat in a game with a _lowly mortal_ like me? In fact, are you even _capable_ of stopping my reincarnation?" you say, then start to chuckle. As your laugh comes to an end, you swear you can see anger in the eyes of X's puppet bodies.

"Humph. Very well. Then we shall _play_ again. As many times as is necessary for you to realize your loss, _Tanya_. I'll see you soon," he says, getting the final word in as things fade to black.

* * *

And once again, you are a baby. Urgh. This time you were born as:

 _AN: What follows is an example of the voting options. I'll typically cut these out (they can get quite long, and it seems that FanFiction's document system eats part of the formatting which makes it difficult to read so I have to replace it by hand), and merely list the winning plan at the beginning of the next chapter. The one below was for the character selection. The bits of -[] are markers used by a program which counts the votes. Normally, the '.' I've added wouldn't be included, but FanFiction hates having a '-' next to another '-' apparently._

* * *

 _AN: this uses Plan Based Voting. Copy the formatting_ _exactly_ _as below with regards to number of '-' or your vote may not be counted._

 _Must have a positive advantage balance at end of plan. Ie, 0 or more advantages remaining._

[] Origin Plan Name

-[] an adorable boy (costs **two** advantages)

-.-[] with white hair and blue eyes (cute, angry)

-.-[] with blonde hair and blue eyes (cute, angry)

-.-[] write in (must include cute and angry images)

-[] an adorable girl (costs **one** advantage)

-.-[] with blonde hair and blue eyes (cute, angry)

-.-[] write in (must include cute and angry images)

.

-[] called Tanya (advantage neutral)

-[] Write in name (add additional disadvantage, use this list for ancient roman options)

.

-[] born to

-.-[] living and somewhat abusive parents who take advantage of you (gives **one** advantage)

-.-[] dead parents who were (advantage neutral)

-.-[] living generally apathetic parents who were (costs **one** advantage)

-.-[] living, caring parents who were (costs **two** advantages)

-.-[] wretched slaves with cruel masters (gives **three** advantages)

-.-[] impoverished slum-dwellers (gives **two** advantages)

-.-[] subsistence farmers (gives **one** advantage)

-.-[] poor servants (advantage neutral)

-.-[] reasonably well off craftsman (costs **one** advantage)

-.-[] wealth merchants (costs **two** advantages)

-.-[] poor knights (costs **two** advantages)

-.-[] middling mages (costs **three** advantages)

-.-[] wealthy knights (costs **three** advantages)

-.-[] mid-ranked nobles (costs **four** advantages)

-.-[] high level mages (costs **four** advantages)

-.-[] low-rank royalty (costs **five** advantages)

-.-[] the king of a tributary nation (costs **six** advantages)

-.-[] the Emperor (costs **seven** advantages)

-.-.-[] and you're the heir (costs **one** additional advantage, applies to any option costing **two or more** advantages)

.

.

Of course, you maintained your old blessings and talents, including your excellent talent in magical power and technique, and your 'miraculous' prayer for magical technique (1 rank), power (1 rank), and Mechanimagical skill (1 rank).

-[] you were further blessed with some new advantages

-.-[] A powerful body (varies, select only one option)

-.-.-[] A good body (1 bonus to physique) (costs **one** advantage)

-.-.-[] A great body (3 rank bonus to physique) (costs **three** advantages)

-.-.-[] An excellent body (5 rank bonus to physique) (costs **five** advantages)

.

-.-[] A healthy body (variable, select only one option)

-.-.-[] Healthy as a horse (don't get regular illnesses) (costs **one** advantage)

-.-.-[] Unnaturally healthy (no regular illnesses, resist poisons, recover faster from injuries) (costs **two** advantages)

-.-.-[] Wait, were you cut? (no regular illnesses, only the strongest of poisons have an effect, recover even faster from injuries, saving roll against serious wounds) (costs **three** advantages)

.

-.-[] A talent for magic in this new world, it was (varies, select only one option)

-.-.-[] a normal talent (1 rank bonus to gate magic) (costs **one** advantage)

-.-.-[] a great talent (3 rank bonus to gate magic) (costs **three** advantages)

-.-.-[] an excellent talent (5 rank bonus to gate magic) (costs **five** advantages)

.

-.-[] the capacity for spirit magic (unlocks spirit magic) (costs **two** advantages)

-.-.-[] And a talent for spirit magic (1 rank bonus to spirit magic) (costs **one** advantage)

-.-.-[] And a great talent for spirit magic (3 rank bonus to spirit magic) (costs **three** advantages)

-.-.-[] And an excellent talent for spirit magic (5 rank bonus to spirit magic) (costs **five** advantages)

.

-.-[] a resilience against enemy magic (variable)

-.-.-[] A mild talent against magic (2 rank bonus to resist magic) (costs **one** advantage)

-.-.-[] A great talent against magic (6 rank bonus to resist magic) (costs **three** advantages)

-.-.-[] A absolute resilience to magic (10 rank bonus to resist magic) (costs **five** advantages)

.

-.-[] the ability to use Imperial Mechanimagic from the old world without a drive at (variable, pick one). _Note, known skill 'Traditional Magic' allows casting of Mechanimagical techniques at Traditional Magic Rank/2. Currently rank 10_

-.-.-[] ½ power (costs **two** disadvantages)

-.-.-[] ¾ power (costs **five** disadvantages)

-.-.-[] full power (costs **eight** disadvantages)

.

-.-[] a mental library of … (variable) _Note, Tanya has familiarity with these devices, knows how to maintain them, and participated in a research group involving their construction. Basic level is reasonably reach-able, and even the top level is if we choose to make it a priority_.

-.-.-[] basic Imperial Mechanimagic and their construction techniques (costs **two** disadvantages)

-.-.-[] all Imperial Mechanimagic and their construction techniques, including the Elinium Types 97 and 95 (costs **five** disadvantages)

.

.

-[] some _dubious_ blessings (all advantage neutral, _note: take too many and Tanya will break_ _fast_ _, and just refuse, taking the penalty, or do something rash_ )

-.-[] requisite prayer for… (improves quality one trait by praying, causes mental stress, not praying reduces trait by one)

-.-.-[] health

-.-.-[] physique (note, may make it hard to fight without prayer)

-.-.-[] Gate magic (note, will make it hard to learn Gate magic _without_ prayer)

-.-.-[] Spirit magic (note, will make it hard to learn Spirit magic _without_ prayer)

-.-.-[] drive-less magic (note, will make it hard to use magic at all without prayer)

-.-.-[] mechanimagical device construction inspiration

.

-[] … and cursed with some disadvantages

-.-[] Being X afflicted you with some _weird_ auras… _Note, these can have serious (negative) synergy with each other, be careful!_

-.-.-[] Stop watching me: people around you feel like they are always being watched, and they will think you're responsible. (gives **two** advantages)

-.-.-[] Feeling judged: people around you feel like you see and judge all their faults. (gives **two** advantages)

-.-.-[] Please don't let me be misunderstood: people often tend to think you mean the opposite of what you're trying to get them to, for example that you're being rude when trying to be polite, cruel when trying to appear kind, hapless when trying to appear competent, etc. (gives **two** advantages)

-.-.-[] So adorable!: People think you're totally adorable, and significantly younger than you are. Will make it _very_ difficult to command troops, almost impossible until you are fully grown, and makes you a particularly attractive target for the worst scum. ( gives **two** advantages)

-.-.-[] Off, damned spot!: You always smell of blood, and have a _very_ difficult time washing it off of you. Vaguely unsettling, makes it difficult to interact with civilized people away from the battlefield ( gives **two** advantages)

-.-.-[] Spiritual scent: You smell of the divine, but not any god recognized in Falmart. Expect interest, ranging from curiosity to obsession to serious hostility from the local gods and their apostles once you are noticed (gives **five** advantages)

.

-.-[] A weak body (varies, select only one option)

-.-.-[] A slightly weak body (1 malus to physique) (gives **one** advantage)

-.-.-[] A very weak body (3 rank malus to physique) (gives **three** advantages)

-.-.-[] An feeble body (5 rank malus to physique) (gives **five** advantages)

.

-.-[] An unhealthy body (variable, select only one option)

-.-.-[] slightly unhealthy (get regular illnesses) (gives **one** advantage)

-.-.-[] very healthy (regular, potentially serious illnesses, recover slower from injury) (gives **two** advantages)

-.-.-[] Wait, how are you alive (regular potentially serious illnesses, do not recover naturally from wounds, wound severity is increased) (gives **three** advantages)

.

-.-[] A issue with magic in this new world, it was (varies, select only one option)

-.-.-[] difficult to learn (1 rank malus to gate magic) (gives **one** advantage)

-.-.-[] very difficult to learn (3 rank malus to gate magic) (gives **three** advantages)

-.-.-[] impossible to learn (cannot learn gate magic) (gives **five** advantages)

.

-.-[] a weakness against magic (variable)

-.-.-[] A mild weakness to magic (2 rank malus to resist magic) (gives **one** advantage)

-.-.-[] A great weakness to magic (6 rank malus to resist magic) (gives **three** advantages)

-.-.-[] A absolute weakness to magic (10 rank malus to resist magic) (gives **five** advantages)

.

-[] an **inability** to use Imperial Mechanimagic from the old world without a drive. _Note, known skill 'Traditional Magic' allows casting of Mechanimagical techniques at Traditional Magic Rank/2. Currently rank 10_ (gives **two** advantages)

.

-[] an issue remembering Imperial Mechanimagic… (variable) _Note, Tanya has familiarity with these devices, knows how to maintain them, and participated in a research group involving their construction. Basic level is reasonably reach-able, and even the top level is if we choose to make it a priority_.

-.-[] advanced Imperial Mechanimagic and their maintenance and construction techniques, including the Elinium Types 97 and 95 (gives **two** disadvantages)

-.-[] all Imperial Mechanimagic and their construction techniques (gives **five** disadvantages)

-.-[] an **inability** to use Imperial Mechanimagic **_at all_** ( gives **three** advantages) _recommended to take this ONLY with issues remembering all imperial mechanimagic and inability to use Mechanimagic without a drive. May make quest_ _extremely_ _difficult_.


	3. Third Childhood

**Post 3: Third Childhood's a Charm?**

* * *

[Spoiler= "Winning Vote"]

[X]Tanya Lil' Artificer  
-[X] an adorable girl (costs **one** advantage) _Note, yes, you have to start off at a deficit. Just less of one as a girl, as that's a disadvantage in a medieval setting.  
-.-[X] with pink hair and red eyes. (_Young Child, Cute _,_ At Work, Having Fun, Suffering Fools) _  
-[X] called Tanya (advantage neutral)  
-[X] born to  
-.-[X] dead parents who were (gives __**one**_ _advantage)  
-.-.-[X] reasonably well off craftsman (costs __**one**_ _advantage)  
-[X] you were further blessed with some new advantages  
-.-[X] a mental library of … (variable) Note, Tanya has familiarity with these devices, knows how to maintain them, and participated in a research group involving their construction. Basic level is reasonably reach-able, and even the top level is if we choose to make it a priority.  
-.-.-[X] all Imperial Mechanimagic and their construction techniques, including the Elinium Types 97 and 95 (costs __**five**_ _disadvantages)_

-[X] … and cursed with some disadvantages  
-.-[X] Being X afflicted you with some weird auras… Note, these can have serious (negative) synergy with each other, be careful!  
-.-.-[X] Please don't let me be misunderstood: people often (but not always) tend to think you mean the opposite of what you're trying to get them to, for example that you're being rude when trying to be polite, cruel when trying to appear kind, hapless when trying to appear competent, etc. (gives

 _ **two**_ _advantages)  
-.-.-[X] So adorable!: People think you're totally adorable, and significantly younger than you are. Will make it very difficult to command troops, almost impossible until you are fully grown, and makes you a particularly attractive target for the worst scum. (gives __**two**_ _advantages)_ [/Spoiler]

* * *

 _12/6/671 - 1/1/674 of the Imperial Calendar (Age 0-2 years)._

The situation of your third birth was rather better than your second. Granted, your parents are both dead; your father of an illness during the later stages of your mother's pregnancy, and your mother during childbirth. You _were_ a winter baby, born the six day of the twelfth month in the six-hundred-seventy-first year of the Imperial Calendar, and in pre-modern times winter births were far more dangerous. You suppose you're lucky to have survived. Then again, if you hadn't, you think you might have simply woken up somewhere _else_ instead.

Unlike your second birth, your parents were well off. Father was a successful jeweler. Due in part to abiding loyalty, his best student, Journeyman Vergil Avitus, has taken over the shop and your guardianship, splitting its profits with you (though the money is under his control until you are of age).

It wasn't an _entirely_ altruistic move. Due to guild rules, Vergil isn't actually allowed to have a permanent shop, but has to work in someone else's. In a few years, with the right demonstration pieces and a good reputation Vergil will be able to apply to be a Master Jeweler. However, _your_ shop still counts as a valid employer for Vergil. Apparently, you are assumed to have a slumbering membership in the Honorable Guild of Jewelers until you reach adulthood and either become an active member or lose your membership. That's the case for all Master Tradesmen's children, and your father's passing didn't change anything.

That said, given how profitable he's keeping the place and the quality of the work you watch him produce from your crib, Vergil would easily be able to join a larger shop with a renowned Master, someone who could help him with Guild politics and improve his craft. Plus, the guild rates for loose journeymen assume that they are working under a master who is _also_ working, and that there are typically more journeyment and apprentices there as well, so Vergil would be seeing a higher percentage of his take if he weren't looking after you.

Which is why you're thankful your father was a good enough teacher that his student was willing to look after you. You're even more thankful that you will have access to all the jeweler's fine tools and precious materials when it comes time to build Mechanimagical devices. You seem to have a perfect memory of all the maintenance, plans and construction techniques needed to produce Imperial Mechanimagic devices from your last life. Granted, given your positions as combat leader, experimental tester and training commander you've seen all those things before, but it's only _after_ you died that your memory of them became so sharp.

Suspicious. But, you choose to reserve judgement as to whether Being X was responsible. He _may_ have been, in which case it was certainly part of some arcane plot, the bastard. Or, he may _not_ have been. Either way, you'll take the knowledge, and neither way will you be thanking Being X.

Apart from Vergil, there are two other main members of your little family. Photine Eudoxia is your family slave and maid. She looks after you day to day, taking care of feeding and nappy changing until you were old enough for potty-training. There's also Hrodulf Gasto, a wolfman slave who guards the shop. In your expert opinion, he's a bit better than the average professional guard and seems trustworthy.

Unfortunately, none of them are liable to let you get away with _anything_. You appear to be particularly adorable, even more so than your past life. You're not sure exactly _what_ it is, but even snot-covered and crying (you're a little child, _it happens_ ) you look delectable. Given your age, and it's no surprise that Vergil is such a hover-mother, keeping you far away from anything hot or sharp. You are obviously his precious little girl, and he worries constantly, keeping you in his or another adult's sight at all times. You doubt you'll be able to do much in the workshop until at least age five, and even then under strict supervision.

Photine, in a constant competition with Vergil for your affections, lets you get away with a bit more. She seems to think children need to run about and get into a bit of (controlled) chaos, even if they're as cute as you are. This translates to being given an average amount of attention and freedom for a two year old. In other words, _not much_.

Of the three though, Hrodulf is the worst. First, he's _super_ protective. Second, he seems to think you're made out of spun glass, and will break at the first sign of _anything_. Last, he has senses like, well, a wolf. He's constantly aware of where you are and what you're doing, even when you're in another room. Sneaky projects or magical experimentation will be discovered quickly under his sharp [S]eye[/S] ears.

Apart from your unnatural adorability, you seem to be misunderstood more commonly than is normal. When you were still learning Saderan and couldn't yet speak, it was common for your caretakes to mistake hunger, needing to be changed, and needing to be burped. You were quite clear, and maintained consistent signals for each issue; your caretakers are not normally such fools. After you were speaking and eating, they often misunderstood whether you liked or disliked some situation or food.

You're not sure what's going on with this seeming aura of communications confusion, but you don't like it. Again, you're not sure whether to blame Being X, or perhaps that the body language and communications of the locals is somehow subtly different from those in your past life and you are having troubles adjusting, but it's _irritating_. Luckily it hasn't caused any major issues.

As for where you were born. Well, once again you are an "Imperial" citizen. This time though your homeland has _no_ serious foes. Rather, it is the sole and uncontested superpower of the continent, and is large and powerful enough no other nation is a true threat. Oh, there are plenty of barbarous areas left to conquer, and the clients states could be defeated (whether politically or militarily) and absorbed, but the barbarians are mostly disorganized, and the clients are sufficiently respectful and give tribute.

In some ways, having tribal areas to raid for military merit and slaves may help the Empire; it provides a safety release, an enemy that can be safely fought and killed, a way for those martially inclined to pursue their inclinations without rebellion. It also prevents the military from getting _too_ soft.

As for the Empire itself, it seems to resemble the Roman Empire, but with a number of fantasy elements including magic and fantastic beasts.

Within the Empire, you were born in a city called Italica. It is the provincial capital. The province itself has rich agricultural land, and serves as the Empire's breadbasket. Predictably, that means that the province is relatively wealthy. It also sits on the major over-land trade route from the West leading towards the capitol, so there's a fair amount of trade. The lord maintains a fairly large and professional garrison, and manages the fief well enough that there are few issues for common citizens with keeping fed and sheltered and no real risk of banditry. Basically, Italica is a major if provincial population center, less political than the capital, fairly mercantile, prosperous and safe. You might have preferred being born in the mage city, but this is a close second.

[Spoiler= "Map of the Empire"]

 _AN: If you were reading this on spacebattles, there'd be a map here._

[/Spoiler]

[Spoiler= "Local Map"]

 _Again, map at spacebattles._

[/Spoiler]

Within the Empire, the main news seems to be the sudden onset of war with the Knappnaian Tribes. From what you can gather, they are a group of nomads who dwell in the Knappnai desert and steppes. Some particularly powerful Khan gathered them together, and got them interested in invading, raiding and slaving in Imperial territory a few months after your birth.

Luckily for the Empire, the initial attack suffered a significant defeat at Tanska, a fortress town protecting the pass towards Bellnahgo, Rondel and other important Imperial territories. Following their advance stalling, fighting moved into the region east of Lake Seth and north of the river Row.

Here, things went rather worse for the Imperials. As the summer passed into Autumn, the Imperial army gathered to respond to the Knappnaians met them in battle. Much more comfortable in open fields and grasslands rather than a siege, the Knappnaian horsemen and horse-archers reaped a bloody toll on the Empire. Three legions and six auxilia cohorts, a total of about twenty thousand men, were destroyed. A few hundred eventually made it back to Imperial territory.

The Empire was _not_ used to losing so severely, especially to barbarians. The general opinion seemed to be that incompetence was at fault; the general in charge didn't survive, and his family bore the Emperor's sanction in his place. _You_ of course know that Roman-style legions and Western-style knights, the mainstays of the Imperial military, are seriously limited when dealing with mounted skirmishers.

The Empire didn't seem to get that message though, and proved Einstein's definition of stupidity correct by trying the same experiment but hoping for different results. Following a relatively mild winter, Prince Zorzal, apparently an aggressive hawk with military aspirations petitioned for and was granted command of the second army to match the Knappnaians. Taking two legions from Telta and one from the capitol, as well as attached auxilia, Zorzal marched out only to be forced to retreat some three months later, his forces at 60% strength with no gains to show from it.

Reinforced with two new legions, one from your own Italican region, he once again takes the field only to run into heavy losses due to hit-and-run attacks and the ability of the Knappnaian shamans to hide their forces in the grasslands, desert and scrub terrains common to the region. Zorzal was forced to retreat to the river Row. Knappnaian forces, mostly done looting and enslaving the region pushed forwards but were unable to cross the Row before winter set in.

That year the winter was particularly brutal, with several serious storms and repeated snowfall. Their supplies strained and their warriors unused to such conditions, the Knappnaians were driven back. The Imperials re-took much of the region, and fortified the major passes from Knappnai into Imperial territory to avoid a repeat. That said, the Empire has entered into Knappnaian tribal history as a rich and honorable target, and you suspect that smaller Knappnaian raids will continue to be a semi-constant issue for years to come.

Despite the ignominy of the situation, the Empire didn't _really_ care overmuch. The region was poor and hardscrabble to begin with, and other situations are more pressing or profitable to deal with. Zorzal, despite being a pretty shit general as far as you can judge, was apparently fairly brave. He may have lost, but as a fighting general his men respected him and the fact that the territory was eventually reclaimed meant that they felt they hadn't died for nothing. As a prince who was successful in fighting to defend the Empire from barbarians (at least according to Imperial propaganda), he's fairly popular with the common man. Politically he seems to have come out fairly well with the senatorial class. The casualties were within acceptable margins, and while there were mutterings that the Empire should have conquered those barbarians a long time ago, there was no real interest in funding a war. Especially since the money for that would mostly come from said senatorial class.

The reason you know so much about this was because a returning Tribune was at your shop shortly after the conflict ended. While their wife chatted with Vergil, you managed to get the Tribune off to the side. He was fairly gracious answering your questions, especially with the right flattery and admiration in you childish gaze.

Faking? Of course. Such an abject performance is far from praiseworthy. But if it got you some information, you'd likely have sold your mother's corpse, especially after two years of infancy and toddler-hood.

As for personal development, by now you have a good understanding and decent ability to make yourself understood in Saderan, the official language of the Empire. You can walk too. What approach do you want to take to the next few years?

* * *

 _AN: Winning vote at beginning of next chapter._

* * *

 _AN: For those interested in how a quest works, a lot of things get decided by dice. I use more than most, but it's fairly normal for 100-sided digital die with modifiers for skills and attributes to be used to determine advantages in combat, etc., etc. There's a fairly lengthy post on mechanics over on Spacebattles (and a link to a spreadsheet I use to keep track of Tanya's character information), but I believe it's against FanFiction policy to post that here._

 _In the future, on FanFiction, I may avoid posting them, but they're all available on the Spacebattles thread. If you're not interested, you can just scroll down and skip to the next chapter._

 _This is an example of the rolls done for this particular chapter._

[Spoiler= "Rolls"]

 _-[X] dead parents who were (gives_ _ **one**_ _advantage)  
-[X] reasonably well off craftsman (costs __**one**_ _advantage)_

Which city were you born in? 82 - Provincial Capital Italica. Wealthy farmland in the heart of the Imperial region with a large garrison, well managed fief. Less political than the capital, fairly mercantile (trade and agriculture), prosperous and safe.

Background usefulness: 98. Your parents ran a jewelry shop. It wasn't the largest, wealthiest or best established, but it was fairly profitable. Start with a medieval jeweler's workshop. Father's journeyman, Vergil Avitus, is currently running the shop and is willing to teach you. Photine Eudoxia, family slave maid, largely looks after you. Hrodulf Gasto, a slave wolfman guard, guards the shop.

Shop profitability: 85. It turns out Vergil is both highly capable and very honest. You have a modest income.

Vergil lets you get away with: 46-20 (adorable): Not much, treats you as a precious child, doesn't really let you out of some adult's sight, worries constantly, doesn't let you near anything hot or sharp. Workshop locked until age 5.

Photine lets you get away with: 77-20: A fair bit, she thinks children need to run about and get into a little bit of (controlled) chaos, even if they're as cute as you are.

Vergil and Photine romance? 8. No, they actually do not get along well, competing for your affections.

Hrodulf prowess: 69. He's a bit better than the average professional guard, and is reasonably trustworthy.

He lets you get away with: 6-20: Variant: 77. Absolutely nothing, _super_ protective. And the wolf has ears like, well, a wolf.

-[X] Please don't let me be misunderstood: people often (but not always) tend to think you mean the opposite of what you're trying to get them to, for example that you're being rude when trying to be polite, cruel when trying to appear kind, hapless when trying to appear competent, etc. (gives

 _ **two**_ _advantages)_

Aura shenanigans: 60. Didn't act up too much, young children are a) pretty obvious, b) people don't _mind_ if they do something a bit weird

 _-[X] So adorable!: People think you're totally adorable, and significantly younger than you are. Will make it very difficult to command troops, almost impossible until you are fully grown, and makes you a particularly attractive target for the worst scum. (gives_ _ **two**_ _advantages)_ [/Spoiler]

Aura shenanigans: 17. It is particularly bad to be a baby/toddler with an adorable aura. No! Put me down I say!

Imperial happenings: 2. 1/50 year disaster. Type? 80. War. Bearing? 300. Invasion of Knappnains (not!mongols/Parthians/arabs)  
War progress: Empire: 63. Knappnain tribes: 20. Suffer a significant defeat at Tanska, advance stalls. Fighting moves to grasslands in the NW direction from the capital, north of the river Row and east of Tanska.  
War progress II: Empire: 16. KT: 87. Three legions and six auxilia cohorts (total ~20,000) destroyed in the grasslands. Only a few hundred make it back to Imperial territory. Imperial incompetence is assumed; the general's family are sanctioned.

First hand accounts? 30. No.

K like the winter? 64. Mild, it was fine.

War progress III: Empire: 36. KT: 89. Crown prince takes the field with two legions from Telta, one from the Capitol. Three months later he returns, his forces at 60% strength with no gains to show from it.

First hand accounts? 42. No.

K raiding: 59

War progress IV: Empire: 25. KT: 82. Prince, reinforced with two new legions, one raised from the Italican region, once again takes the field. Again, they take heavy casualties, unable to deal with the hit and run attacks and the ability for Knappnain shamans to hide their forces in the grasslands, desert and scrub terrains.

Hold the river row: 65, yes. Currently, Imperial forces are holding at Row.

Hold Tanska: 70, yes.

FHA: 82, yes.

K raiding: 59. Area has been sacked, K will push forwards.

K like the winter? 14. No, a couple serious storms and repeated snowfall drove them back.

War ends? 70. Imperials re-take much of the region, fortify passes from Knappnai into Imperial territory.

Does it work? 69. Yes, though knappnain raids are now a semi-constant.

General imperial response? 29. Area is poor, no one really cares, other issues to deal with.

View of Zorzal (soldiers): 92. He may have lost, but he was a fighting general, and in the end the territory was reclaimed.

Zorzal (population): 80. He's the prince, there's a certain cachet, and imperial propaganda is painting this a win.

Zorzal (political): 74. Victorious, mostly. Casualties were acceptable, as was outcome. Empire should have conquered them a long time ago. Fund a war? No, there's no money. Keep your hands away from my money!

Hidden: 15

[/Spoiler]


	4. Looks and Brains

**Post 4:** **Looks** ** _and_** **Brains**

* * *

[Spoiler= "Winning Vote]

[X] Little genius. You'll show obvious genius when your caretakers start to teach you to read and write. Sets you up well for attempting to get lessons from a sage in the future. (low risk)

[X] Tanya is Tanya. blonde hair and blue eyes (cute, serious, at work, angry)

[/Spoiler]

* * *

 _AN: Omakes are a major part of quests. They are sometimes author written, but most often reader written scenes meant to amuse, show different characters reacting to a situation, fill in what's happening elsewhere, speculate on what might happen, show something from the protagonists childhood, or be a training montage, or whatever else the omake writer can think of. Quest writers will often reward the participation with "Omake Rewards", points used to buy advantages for the character, or provide a bonus to a roll to clear a high difficulty check or amerliorate a critical failure. Some Omakes become canon, part of the accepted events of the story. Below is an example; for the rest of the story, these won't be shown though they are part of the original quest thread._

[Spoiler= "Omake Rewards"]

Daemonkeeper – 100 words

Sinsystems – 2200 words

LighterShoulders – 375 words

Blonddude42 – bought stage 1 driveless.

Sinsystems & Daemonkeeper – bought off misunderstood disadvantage

[/Spoiler]

* * *

 _AN: All the info on the military ranks, legion structure, etc is laid out in the general information post (New AN: which is on Spacebattles). There's also maps, mechanics, and a short initial explanation on Gate magic._

 _1/1/674 - 1/1/677 of the Imperial Calendar (Age 2-5 years)._

Over the last three years, you've been showing yourself to be quite the little genius. Your learning has gone well. You are obviously highly intelligent, capable of holding a conversation and reading the (thankfully phonetic) Saderan alphabet. Moreover, you haven't aroused overly much suspicion.

But if your book learning went well, your exercises have gone _amazingly_. You started off by watching Hrodulf train, a ruse to provide an explanation as to why _you_ were training in a military fashion. Then you got to it. Your body might have been weak and soft to begin with, but you still remember all the exercises used to train you when you were a child soldier, and even with your relatively limited understanding of medimagic you've been able to accelerate the process, optimizing your growth given your age. After years of war, the simple exertion and minor pain of what would to anyone else be a torturous exercise and treatment regime seems negligible.

And your body obviously responded. You have a great physique for your age, significantly more efficient than a body normally would. If you keep this up into the future, you'll doubtless be even faster and stronger than in your second life, and suffer no deficits due to a small female body. Plus, you were able to cast driveless magic at a significantly higher level than you're used to. Maybe as you get older, that will get even better!

Which brings you back to your body. It's obviously _exactly the same_ as your second life (cute, serious, at work, angry). Which… is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it was a good body. Tough, fast, strong, good senses, fast reaction time, small and agile. Everything that might be useful for an aerial mage. On the other hand, petite, female, and utterly adorable, a trait further enhanced by whatever damned aura Being X subjected you too. And did you mention _female!_ You just hope that _next life_ you'll be male. Otherwise you might end up _adapting_. If that happens, you just hope it'll be limited to being a lesbian. You think that would probably cause the least mental corruption.

At least the aura of confusion, resulting in your being semi-persistently misunderstood seems to have worn off.

But that was the last of the really good news on the home-front. Your third objective for this period of time, to learn more about jewelry, was an abject failure. Vergil's still overprotective, but he's been making enough of a name for himself and your shop that he's been extremely busy. It wouldn't be too bad, if this were a normal shop where he would have partial use of an apprentice, but without an actual master jeweler present the rules don't allow for apprentices. Vergil, despite being highly skilled and _technically_ with enough time as a journeyman to apply, is only barely experienced enough for the guild masters to think about promoting him, and without a patron within the guild hasn't been on the list these past three years. Maybe someday soon, though.

On the other hand, there was one thing which went well that you _hadn't_ been expecting. Namely, you've garnered the attention of a sage. Or, at least, the student of a local sage. Her name is Kallisto Elpis. The very intelligent daughter of high ranking servants of a local noble landowner and food-producer, she is studying agricultural techniques and economics. Unfortunately, her magical power is entirely substandard, and she is limited to the intellectual pursuit of natural philosophy and improved estate management.

Her teacher is her lady mistress' cousin, Cassia Julia Valeriana. Valeriana has a noble background, and is Count Formal's agricultural advisor. She has a noble background, but no significant magical power, being like Kallisto more of an academic and natural philosopher than she is a magical powerhouse. Whether fortunate or unfortunate, she has no interest in meeting with you until you're older, but doesn't mind her student visiting you and lending you books and notes.

You _cannot_ stress enough how good it was to meet Kallisto. She came in one day to get a piece of jewelry repaired, and saw you reading a book on the local flora which Vergil had gifted to you for your fourth birthday. You'd read the thing half-a-dozen times, but it was illustrated nicely and described all the edible and poisonous plants you were likely to come across. Constant operational readiness was your religion, and this text was worth at least a chapter in its bible.

Kallisto, interested and waiting around for Vergil to finish the job, came over and talked to you. You may have been a bit starved of intellectual communications, and likely gave off several warning signs of unnatural intelligence, but she didn't notice. She was too impressed by how adorable and intelligent you were. While you could likely have done without the "adorable" part, you were more than happy to have access, even at a remove, to the small collection of texts that Kallisto was allowed to lend you. Plus, Kallisto would visit once every week or two, and you would go off for a chat about what was going on in the province and Empire at large. Living in Count Formal's palace, she had much better access to information than Vergil did, and was much more willing to share it with you.

That's how you found out such tidbits as gaining a certain fame locally as an adorable little girl. You _had_ noticed that there was an increased traffic of wealthy teens and women, and that they gave you more attention than they should. Apparently Kallisto was partially to blame, but she said that reports of your _cuteness_ had already began to spread when she met you.

As for Imperial happenings, in 674 there was a drought. Luckily no fires broke out, but food shortages did make the poorer citizens and non-citizen commoners unhappy. That year the Knappnaian raiders also managed to sneak some troops past the border, ambushing patrols and supply convoys. You guess that with such incompetents in command there that you're lucky there wasn't a major breakthrough.

675 was a year of bumper crops, as if to balance out 674. This was especially good news for Italica, as it meant increased profits. As for the Knappnaians, a recently arrived and uncommonly intelligent tribune had the idea of bribing local non-hostile tribes to act as scouts, paying a bounty for every trail they found through the mountains. With those goat-paths located and closed off, the threat of raiders was seriously reduced for the future.

Finally, this past year there have been numerous unnatural portents in the Empire. Two headed goats. Three eyed pigeons. Honestly, you half suspect magic, or perhaps some sort of radiation. Luckily, there wasn't anything strange happening in Italica, so hopefully it wasn't anything to worry about. That said, it has unsettled the populace. The Knappnaians continued to be a nuisance, but this time only to the troops guarding the border. They skirmished with military patrols and menaced some of the smaller outposts, but didn't manage to achieve anything of note.

Now five years old, you need to decide what to do for the next three years.


	5. Apprentice

**Post 5:** **Apprentice**

* * *

[Spoiler= "Winning Vote]

[X] Plan name: Secrets of A New World  
-[X] Mentally, you'll demonstrate that you're…  
-[X] a scary prodigy. Demonstrate some of your unnaturally developed intellect. May worry caretakers, but they'll _probably_ assume it's natural for you. (Risk +2 ranks, improves odds of gaining mentor)  
-[X] As for your magic, you'll demonstrate… _(risk without mentor/risk with mentor)_  
-[X] The potential for magic, but skillfully (+3/0 risk, guarantees mentor, though maybe not one that's good for you)  
-[X] Physically, you…  
-[X] Only exercise enough to maintain yourself, spending the extra time on…  
-[X] Magical practice.  
-[X] Other than that, you… (pick one)  
-[X] Try to find a local sage to mentor you through Kallisto. You had her look into who she knows about, and want to be taught by the… (pick as many as you want, with the most preferred on top) _Note, organized as Specialty (skill, gender, magic power, background, current position, likely interest in you as a student)_  
-[X] Enchanter (Rank 11, female, extremely strong magic, lesser noblewoman, has her own shop, seriously likely to be interested)  
-[X] Naturalist/Seer (Rank 16/12, male, extremely strong magic, poor knight's son, visiting guest, above average interest)  
-[X] Bioalchemist (Rank 13, female, weak magic, officer's daughter, count's aunt, extremely low expected interest)  
-[X] Adventurer/Battlemage (direct combat) (Rank 12, male, 1 in 1400 magic power, poor knightly family, wandering adventurer, extremely likely to be interested) _Note, Vergil &Co. will worry a bit with this one._

[/Spoiler]

* * *

 _1/1/677 - 1/1/680 of the Imperial Calendar (Age 5-8 years)._

Your fifth year in this world of fantasy was one of great change and progress. Kallisto had, at your request, looked into the sages either in or nearby Italica, finding out their specialties and whether they might want to take you on as a student. It was a hard decision to pick who you wanted to study under. The young, powerful battlemage adventurer with a heroic reputation. The ancient naturalist and seer, renowned throughout academic circles and with no small fame in the Empire at large. The haughty bioalchemist, related to your own Count Formal.

But no, in the end you chose the young Lucia Octavia Longina, eccentric noblewoman and enchantress. And, to your great fortune, she accepted you as a student.

[Spoiler= "Lucia Octavia Longina] _Image available on Spacebattles_ [/Spoiler]

Which brought you to the oath.

"The oath," explained Lucia, "is as old as the Empire itself. When Rondel was in talks with the Empire of Sadera, Caesar who was the in his first year as the first Emperor, sent as his emissary a mage who had trained at Rondel to negotiate with the Council of Grand Sages. There was a famous exchange of questions concerning why sages, especially those with powerful magic, should be bound to a nation. The council asked:

"What is the law?" to which the emissary replied:

"The law is the structure that surrounds our lives, and gives them meaning".

"What is the highest embodiment of the law?" the council continued.

"The Empire is the highest embodiment of the law" the emissary replied without thinking.

"What are you?" the next question followed.

"I am a servant of the Empire," the emissary replied confidently, sparking a brief discussion amongst the council, none of whom had borne the title 'servant' in their lives.

"In what manner are you allowed to serve?" And here, the council came to the crux of the matter. If bound to serve, _how would they be bound_. The law might serve tyrant or visionary, and Rondel has always taken the long view.

"As I see fit," the emissary answered.* [/Indent]

And with that the covenant of sages was born. Rondel's mages would swear loyalty to the Empire, and in return the Empire would guarantee their traditional privileges, granting them freedom to act as their conscious dictates within the limits of law and custom. The Student's oath was modified, and the agreement has lasted to this day."

After consideration, you decided you might as well take the oath. Though a soldier, you had no great desire to conquer just to rule. That was a _terrible_ way of deciding social position and leadership, after all. The Empire was not just a great nation, but the _greatest_ one in the local region, and a recognized Sage was a well-respected social position with potential for further advancement. Basically, you were _finally_ on the gravy-train. An oath that prevented you from revolution wasn't too much to ask, and from studying historical actions of Rondellian Sages wouldn't prevent you from taking necessary action in a true crisis. So, a few days later, on one of Deldort's holy days, you went to his temple and a soothsayer witnessed and bound your oath.

"Before Deldort keeper of covenants, I swear by my honor, my blood, my magic," you began, your tiny girlish voice comical in the serious setting of the temple, "to keep to the covenant of Imperial sages. In this life, I will give loyal service to the Empire, respecting its laws and the Imperial family as they protect my privileges, respecting me and this covenant. I will honor my craft and the masters who teach it to me as they honor me with their knowledge. I will require this oath from what students I may take in the future, binding knowledge and power with restraint and responsibility. May Deldort witness my oath." With that, you spit on a shallow dish, somewhat like the plate that goes beneath a teacup. The soothsayer used a lancet to prick your finger, dropping three drops of blood onto the dish, then sprinkled it with herbs as he chanted briefly before throwing it into a brazier at the foot of a statue of Deldort. The flame flared, and you felt a vague sense of pressure.

You were bound.

* * *

Lucia was a very _interesting_ teacher. Although Kallisto called her an enchantress, that wasn't entirely accurate. It would be better to describe Lucia as an artist whose medium was artifice and enchantment. In her late twenties or early thirties, she was a powerful mage, good enough to have been among the best of your officers back in the 203rd. Technically, she was an accomplished if not _great_ enchantress, and skilled with fine techniques of artificery.

As an artist she _shone_. Specializing in illusion and animation enchantments, she mainly did high quality work for nobles. There was the occasional instance of defensive clothes and fancy weapons, but only when the pay was high and the requester very highly ranked, or as a favor for a friend. Normally, she worked on extremely fancy accessories. Elaborate enchanted jeweled birds, glass flowers, clothing with illusions embedded with the cloth, exceedingly lifelike yet fantastic masks for costumed balls, even a illusory fireworks display commissioned by Count Formal. Her aesthetic sense is amazing, and her works are sought after from as far away as the capital itself.

You weren't sure if she didn't believe in a traditional education, thought it might bore you, or simply wasn't mentally set up to teach that way. Instead, she simply had you show up and spend the day helping her with her projects, explaining what she was doing as she went along. For a student who was a structured thinker, or an average student, it would have been a brutally difficult method of teaching. For a highly creative student with a great talent for magic, it was _amazingly_ effective.

It was similarly effective for a somewhat creative student with a memory of other world's art, and a great skill with a _very similar_ if somewhat divergent magical tradition. Really, the main difference between conventional magic in Falmart (as opposed to spiritual magic) and mechanimagic was that mechanimagic used more computationally intensive spells optimized for low conceptual understanding, but required a more sophisticated focus while the magic in your current world depended more on a practitioner's comprehension of the phenomenon they wanted to achieve. That meant the magic ended up being more idiosyncratic but the demands on the focus were lower.

Either way, Lucia taught by practice.

As you worked on a mechanical bird, she explained how to imbue materials with magic, turning a mundane material into a magically enhanced one, and how that could allow for finer, thinner and more delicate work to be as strong and tough as something half-again as thick.

She explained with an abstract painting how to make a triggered spell, conditionally activating the magic to cause an illusion of the painting moving. Later, while making a mask for a costume ball, she showed how that same conditional application could be used to bind a device's magic to a single user.

The most impressive project was a dress enchanted to appear as if on fire. It was made of silk from a species of giant, magical spider. The dye was a color made from the crushed shells of phantom scarabs, using a modification of their natural magical camouflage to have the dye's color seem to change. The reason why it was so impressive was the embedded fire illusion.

One of the marks of a great enchanter is the duration of magical effects they can achieve. On the lowest level are simple triggered spells, a single spell bound within an object and then released with a trigger. Beyond that are truly embedded spells, permanent or semi-permanent magical effects attached to an item. This isn't simple magical imbuement, which magically enhances the natural performance of a material (and even doing _that_ permanently is difficult). No, this was true enchantment.

The pinnacle of embedded spells are permanent enchantments, effects which need no further maintenance or magical charging, and yet will last as long as the item itself. To put that in more mundane terms, it's like managing to power a clock with the tidal forces from the moon's orbit. It's almost the equivalent of perpetual magical motion.

Most so-called permanent enchantments aren't actually embedded spells, but rather imbued magic combined with a magical material. For a material with magical properties, imbuing magic can enhance those properties. For example, making a toy boat made of wind-tree wood float. But to achieve a permanent _enchantment_ , one beyond the natural qualities of the materials, that was amazing. Even if the enchantment was a mostly useless cosmetic effect.

Already skilled with illusions, you also learned some animation effects. Animation is the term for any enchantment to do with an item's ability to move itself. The first project you animated was a small, articulated jeweled caterpillar. It was a pretty nifty cosmetic effect. With a greater understanding of motion enchantments, you learned how to enchant a mask to be self-fitting, then to provide mirrored motion, one of Lucia's original magics which allowed a normally solid item to mirror the movements of the wearer, giving it an appearance of being a natural part of them. The range of motion was relatively small, and the magical reagents expensive, but it provided for a unique effect especially sought-after by the rich for costume-balls.

Lucia, ever the artist, ran an interesting business. As both a noblewoman and sage, she was among the upper ranks of society. Rather than a storefront, she was strictly invitation only. Men and women richly adorned in jewels and fine cloths would call on her socially, and discuss what Lucia was working on and might be working on in the near future.

All too often, for your peace of mind at least, these discussions happened over tea and required you to wear a _dress_ as the monsters in female form cooed over how "adorable" you are, _manhandling_ you and patting your cheeks and hair. Honestly, you'd rather be back in the trenches than have to endure such ignominy. And that doesn't even _begin_ to address that one time a noblewoman was visiting, saw you in work clothes, decided you were a servant, and tried to _purchase your contract_ so you could be her, and you quote, "toy maid".

After discussion as to what Lucia was working on, the talk would turn to payment. Lucia almost never took payment in money. Instead, it was typically in expensive materials, property, favors or other considerations. A woman might say her husband had recently bought her a pouch of gems, then ask if Lucia might make it into anything interesting. And _of course_ she should keep whatever gems were left over for her troubles. And later, that woman would get your caterpillar.

Lucia was skilled at social maneuvers, and would often invite multiple people, some of whom she _knew_ were social, economic or political rivals, to showings of her latest works. They would then compete with themselves to offer the most attractive gift in return for the item. Remember that dress? It ended up getting a fairly large vineyard in exchange. Of course, Lucia didn't manage it. Rather, the estate manager and all others stayed on, and her business manager and family helped ensure that no one was skimming more than they should.

Your first year as her apprentice, Count Formal came to pay a visit, talking about how much he had admired Lucia's work with glass flowers enchanted to glow which he'd seen at Baron So-and-so's (whose wife, by the way, had been extremely socially empowered by the installation and thus irritated Countess Formal). He then went on to mention how it was his wife's fortieth birthday soon, and he was hoping to get her something truly unique and grand.

Lucia booked not one but _three_ master glass-blowers and their workshops for months, and spent weeks weaving magic into the result. The final product was amazing, easily the equal to anything you'd seen before. That year, _none_ of Lucia's fairly extensive holdings in the province payed taxes.

Another time, the 2nd Italica's Legate's wife came. Three or four months later, she was the proud owner of a set of metal flowers which absorbed sunlight to shine during the night-time, and Lucia's vineyard and farms were preferred suppliers.

Unfortunately when you were seven Count formal came back, looking for a birthday present for his third daughter, Myui, who was turning four soon. You yawned when speaking, accidentally calling her "miaui," which means "I made water". Apparently that is the _much_ hated nickname her older sisters call her. She hates you now, but she's only three and hopefully she'll forget. Her father, whose despite his aggressive looks has a great reputation for kindness, luckily laughed it off. Myui ended up receiving a solar-powered device which projected will-o-wisp lights.

As you became more used to enchantment, and had spent long enough for Lucia to believe that your skill with magic was due to your genius intellect and high magical talent, you were more willing to contribute new aspects to Lucia's own spells. Apart from helping her to improve her spell work, this led to the most visually impressive and large scale project you worked on. The illusory fireworks show for Empire day, the holiday commemorating when the Articles of Formation were signed and the Republic became an Empire. It got you and Lucia a fair amount of attention and a not inconsiderable amount of fear until she explained that it was all illusory to the awed watchers.

In return for Lucia's unceasing attention and care, you dedicated yourself to your studies, spending pretty much all of your time either working or studying from her library, only doing enough physical exercise to maintain your physique. You made great progress, and managed a good skill with Enchantment and average skill with artifice a few months before your eighth birthday. Because of that, after the fireworks show she took you aside.

"Tanya, I just wanted you to know how proud of you I am. You've grown so much, and learned so quickly." She even teared up a bit, and to your surprise you found yourself doing the same. "Now, you're ready to start working on your own projects," she paused a moment before blurting out "under my supervision, of course!" while blushing. You could faintly hear her mutter "as if I'd give up time with my cutie…"

After thinking about it for a few hours, you decided on your project. You were going to make a focus. When you told Lucia, she blinked before grinning.

"Ambitious," she said. "I like it. You can have free access to the materials, and ask me whatever you need."

Technically, a focus is any item serving as an intermediary for magic which is powered by an external source and modifies the magic that passes through it. There's a subset of focuses called catalysts, which are simply gems or other magically interactive material which passively modifies magic passing through it. For example, a piece of obsidian might serve as a mediocre catalytic focus for a pyromancer. Normally though a focus would have permanent partial or complete spell-formations, allowing a magician to cast spells or spell-sets through it with greater ease and effectiveness.

Creating a personalized focus was an important task for any mage, and that included the sages of Rondel. That said, it was even more important for an enchanter. Unlike many other magicians who might train a few spells until they were instinctive and who tended to have mastered more immediately applicable concepts, enchanters tended to a broader range of effects but were used to having time to construct detailed spellwork. An enchanter's focus would have a wide range of highly customized and optimized spell-formations to level the playing-field. By contrast, a more conventional sage might focus more on the catalytic qualities of the focus, enhancing the essence of their magic to, for example, throw hotter firebolts.

In many ways, the Imperial Mechanimagical Devices of your last life, capable of taking untrained mages and having them battle ready within months to years of training were the ultimate example of the principles behind an enchanter's focus.

Due to its importance, and it being a work of enchantment, a focus is seen as the traditional equivalent of a journeyman's project for enchanters. The reason why it _isn't_ a journeyman's project is that the Sages of Rondel are, like nobles, above and beyond guild law. Despite the official terminology, it is not uncommon for an enchanter with their focus to travel, spending time with other sages specializing in enchantment to grow their capabilities. The reason why Lucia called you ambitious was that, if successful, you were effectively declaring yourself a journeyman enchanter. And you were trying to do so _with your first project_.

Granted, you thought about other projects. The next best idea you had was a cloak, enchanted with everything you might desire. Lightweight, waterproof, insulating to start off with, with lots of pockets on the inside. A spell to allow you to change its color for camouflage and fashion, heat it up and cool it down. Made of a tough fabric, then armored and possibly enchanted with an active shield. Oh, and preferably it would help mask magical emissions, because almost all top combat mages and a number of magical creatures can sense those. You'd have _loved_ to have a cloak like that on campaign. You'd have killed for it. But, in the end, you decided you needed a proper device even more, despite how difficult it might be to make one.

Luckily for you, you have a database of all Imperial Mechanimagical devices in your head. And so you got to work. Over a month later, you finally finished. You had been more successful than you had at first hoped for, making breakthroughs in your enchanting and artificing in the process. You had initially planned on making a basic Folkerr Mk. 13, modified to be worn as part of a bangle which would act as the catalytic "scepter" and enhance the focus all while appearing totally innocuous to those who couldn't sense the magical signature.

You ended up making something _far_ better. Rather than a Folkerr Mk. 13, you managed a full-on Elinium Type 97. For the bangle itself, you used a wood covering with a silver core, enhanced with a fitting enchantment and permanently imbued to improve performance. Then you applied a lacquer made of a resin from a particularly magically resistant tree which had been struck three times with lightning. Mixed into the resin was a stabilized magically conductive green ink whose primary ingredient was sea-dragon spinal fluid. The Type 97 was set in Yggdrasil amber rather than sapphire glass, and included the same copy-protection and blackboxing that the Imperial military had used to prevent other sages or mages from copying it.

You gave the lacquered resin and ink mixture an enchantment which would allow the ink to move through the resin when exposed to magic, giving it a flowing, shimmering quality. Finally, you bound the focus. The combined effect was a dual-core Type 97 casting device, fully capable of handling your magical output and supporting your skill, concealed to mundane inspection as fashionable (though not overly valuable) jewelry and with the magical signature disguised as a simple and harmless cosmetic effect. Further, it was practically useless to other magicians.

You had certainly succeeded in constructing your focus, and demonstrated as much to Lucia by casting a double decoy clone. Laughing and clapping, she congratulated you before saying, saying that now she'll have to ask some of the other sages if they'd be interested in imparting some knowledge to round you out. She told you to take the rest of the week off, then to come back on Sunday for a celebratory party.

You'd been sleeping at Lucia's for about a week, busy finishing your project. When you returned home, you found that Vergil was sick. Seriously sick. It sounded, from the description, like tuberculosis. They hadn't told you to avoid worrying you in the process of finishing your project. To avoid getting sick yourself, you returned to Lucia's after advising Vergil to get better as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, he didn't get better any time soon. Partially in a desire to look after you, and partially due to her growing care for you, Lucia decided to offer to adopt you. You'd be her daughter, which would raise your social status considerably. Vergil had become a Master Jeweler a year into your studies, so he could run a workshop under your employ, or open his own.

Meanwhile, Lucia looked into who might be willing to teach you. You mentioned that you were most interested in the battlemage, the naturalist-seer and the bioalchemist. Of the three, the battlemage Marcellus Lucanus Iuvenalis and the naturalist Tullius Valens Vespasian agreed to teach you when you wanted, while the bioalchemist sent a fairly dismissive if barely polite note of refusal. You think she doesn't like children. Tullius, a fairly ancient sage kept fit by his extensive knowledge of biology, simply likes to teach promising youths. Marcellus, often overworked by the administrative, financial and political aspects of starting a new knightly house in the region welcomes any excuse to practice magic and help shape a young prodigy.

Plus, he _totally_ fancied Lucia. And, as they continue to meet, it looks like they fancy each other. A couple months into their courtship, he proposed and their wedding set for seven months later. They decided on the spring solstice in 680 for the wedding date. He seems like a good man. Friendly, hard-working, honest, relatively manly and dependable, as well as a great mage and fighter, plus he dotes on Lucia and seems in awe of both her and her artistic talent. They're well suited to each other, and you're happy for her.

Meanwhile, Vergil survived the illness and eventually recovered, but was pretty out of it for about two months and needs another few to fully recover. Long term, it's likely he'll get sick more easily, possibly relapsing. Luckily, no one else was ill.

The Empire was pretty quiet these last few years. There are vague mutterings of political disagreements and tension between the Emperor and representatives of some of the Eastern provinces in the capital, but you don't pay it much mind. The Knappnaians tribes, meanwhile, seem to have had their attention focused towards the coastal Knappnaian city-states as the city-states have launched a number of slave raids into tribal territories.

You're now eight years old. What will you focus on for the next few years? And do you accept Lucia's offer of adoption?


	6. Practitioner

**Post 6:** **Practitioner**

* * *

[Spoiler= "Winning Vote]

[X] Building Toward the Future  
-[X] As for the adoption, you…  
-[X] Accept.  
-[X] While training, you…  
-[X] Continue to be a magically skilled prodigy (0 risk)  
-[X] For your time, you focus on (choose 3, may take options more than once):  
-[X] Physically improvement…  
-[X] Exercise _hard_ , using medimagic to try relatively safe experiments to improve your body (likelier to improve physique, rank 1 physical risk, risk +0.5 ranks, more if injured).  
-[X] Personal enchanting project (makes some progress to enchanting/artificing, gain gear)  
-[X] The cloak you didn't make.  
-[X] Jewelry with Vergil…  
-[X] Try and develop and adapt magic you already know to help crafting process.

[/Spoiler]

* * *

 _1/1/680 - 1/1/682 of the Imperial Calendar (Age 8-10 years)._

You decided to accept Lucia's offer of adoption. The first two years of your youth, as opposed to childhood, were quite active.

Personally, you pursued three main projects. First, you attempted to improve yourself physically. Second, you enchanted a cloak with all the abilities you'd like a cloak to have. And third, you developed a suite of magical spells to improve the ease with which you could craft items and practice artificery. The results were mixed.

Physically, you didn't see many improvements from your own efforts. While you exercised hard, and used medimagic to try relatively safe experiments to improve your body, they simply weren't successful. Though you avoided injury and made some modest gains in medimagic, you weren't able to improve your body in any substantial way.

Which made the fact that your body improved regardless, and in a _very_ major way, so perplexing. If it weren't for the fact that it would have been too helpful of the bastard, you might think that Being X had blessed your body, as if to point out how much more effective miracles are compared to human effort. Either way, your non-magically-augmented strength improved by approximately a factor of five. Fully enhanced with magic, you estimate that you're capable of somewhat comfortably carrying about 725kg (1600 lbs). And that's at about half the size you'll eventually grow to.

All of which just makes you grin in sheer happiness. Sometimes physical violence is just more _viscerally_ satisfying. And you mean that _very_ literally. There's just something about the sight and smell of someone's viscera spilling out after being cut open…

Ahh. But, you digress.

Your efforts with the cloak were nearly disastrous. You had _such_ an ambitious list of features, especially with the number of magical enchantments you wanted to add. Lightweight, waterproof, insulating and with lots of pockets on the inside for non-magical aspects. A spell to allow you to change its color for camouflage and fashion, heat it up and cool it down for magically-derived comfort. Made of a tough fabric, then imbued with magic to improve performance and possibly enchanted with an active shield for magically assisted survivability. It would also help mask magical emissions, because almost all top combat mages and a number of magical creatures can sense those. It was basically _every single feature_ you wanted in a cloak, derived from your years of experience in war.

Unfortunately, you didn't really think to take into account how all the magical enchantments would interact with each other, and only quickly cutting a silver thread which connected two magical circuits prevented the thing from catching on fire.

After redesigning it, you realized that you needed a number of the enchantments to be temporary magical effects rather than semi-permanent and more user-friendly enchants. Essentially, the cloak became a focus which specialized in casting a narrow set of spells which affected itself. But, you were still able to pack in all the effects you wanted, so you're happy as a clam in your weather-proof, climate controlled, fashionable, damage resistant silk cloak with camouflage capability. You can even extend your personal shield through it, so it will hopefully last well through combat. Marcellus was pretty jealous when you explained all the features; if you ever need a gift for him, this would be a good one.

Your third major personal effort, developing and adapting magic to help in the crafting process, was your one unqualified success. The magical side of it seemed to come with an unnatural ease, as if your ability to learn new, conventional-style magic broke through some kind of barrier, leaving you far more effective than before. You developed spells to heat, form, handle and cool metals, as well as adapting your projected blade for use in fine detail work.

There's still more you could improve on, such as developing a spell to make specific molds and cut or stamp specific patterns out, both of which would be great for mass production and high quality individual parts both. Even without those further efforts, though, you're already significantly faster and more precise at crafting, even when using Lucia's exquisitely outfitted workshop.

One thing you noticed over this time period was that there seemed to be voices murmuring in the background when you meditated outdoors. You're not sure what's going on with that, but it might be worth investigating.

Socially, you found yourself under more of a microscope than ever. Your original caretakers, as well as Lucia, her household, and when he was around Marcellus _all_ seemed to want to look after you. It's probably a good thing you didn't try anything too risky during this settling in period, or you may have gotten caught.

On the Spring Solstice, the wedding finally happened. Lucia looked beautiful, and the dress surprisingly similar to the wedding dresses of 21st century western culture. As a youth, rather than a child, and as Lucia's adoptive daughter, the wedding was also your first public social event. You did reasonably well there, mostly flying under the radar as the bride and groom drew attention, though you did look pretty adorable dressed up.

Following your first public appearance, there were a few other events you had to go to. The three largest, all thrown by the Count Formal in honor of the Summer Solstice, Empire Day and his own birthday went far better than you had hoped. Although you had a somewhat lackluster personal showing at the Summer Solstice, you made up for it by somehow harnessing your adorable aura to cover any issues you had, and left everyone you interacted with thoroughly charmed.

On Empire Day, you gave perhaps your best social showing at any party _ever_. You're not sure if you were more popular back in the old Empire at military parties, and you had the _Silver Wings Assault Medal_. Once again, you managed to not only control your adorable nature but use it for your own benefit. The last party went similarly well. Though not quite to the extent of the first party, you showed admirably adroit social sense, perfectly portraying yourself as an intelligent, witty, well-mannered, charming, adorable adopted-daughter of Italica's top artistic enchanter.

By the end of the social season, you found yourself more socially capable than before, and with the hope that you might one day control your curse of adorableness, gaining some small measure of advantage from it to make up for its weakening of your authority. Further, you had honored Lucia, demonstrating in front of the entire upper class of Italica why you were a fitting choice for adoption.

While you were glad you didn't have to go to many more parties, and didn't have the risk of social failure, you weren't so glad about the reason. The reports were fragmented and incomplete, at least until the "official" (and propaganda filled) final pronouncements, but some things were clear. While on tour of the Eastern provinces in the early fall, the governor of a province rebelled and tried to seize the Emperor and his family, all of whom were in the rebel's provincial capital at the time.

The Praetorian guard gave a damned good showing, and even outnumbered managed to airlift the Emperor and Princes Zorzal and Diabo, though Zorzal was lightly injured in the fighting. Unfortunately, the Empress caught an arrow and died, while Princess Pina Co Lada was captured by rebel forces.

The Emperor immediately rallied all loyalist forces in the region, and marched towards to the rebel stronghold. The rebels, theoretically around the same number of troops, left to meet the Emperor on the field. With a bit of luck, the rebels might have won with disastrous results. However, when the battle was joined, a secretly loyalist Broad Band Tribune who was second-in-command to the Legate leading the left flank launched a daring and successful coup of his own, killing the rebellious legate and taking command of the legion. He then launched an assault on the unsuspecting rebel force, completely crushing them and freeing the princess.

Although some rebels retreated, the city, seeing which way the wind was blowing, rose up against the rebels. They opened a gate for the Imperial forces to enter the city, and all the conspirators were rounded up and executed after interrogation. The questioning allowed the Emperor to catch all of the conspirators for that particular treachery, as well as a number of unrelated but semi-treacherous conspiracies and gatherings. Unless you miss your guess, some general dissidents and irritants were rounded up during the action as well.

As a result, Imperial loyalty to the royal family was at the highest in living memory, and a wave of expansion in the Emperor's honor broke out. Barbarians captured or enslaved, some less dependable and small client city-states captured and secured.

Italica decided to get involved in the _worst possible way_. You would have picked the Alguna Kingdom as your target. They had rich farmland, a river, some iron mines, and was located to isolate the small alliance led the Elbe Fiefdom (and thus reinforce the Empire's dominion over said alliance). If you really wanted to pressure Elbe, you'd have hit the Principality League. Although the geography made an invasion there a bit harder, they lacked a strong central government and their feudal levies would have fallen relatively easily to Imperial Legions.

But no. Rather than either of these targets, Count Formal decided to go after the _bloody Knappnaians._ What's worse than fighting nomads in _your_ grasslands? Fighting them in _their_ deserts. Seriously, it's basically a recipe for disaster, marching troops into a desert without a massive supply chain. And expecting _any_ supply chain to hold up under constant raids by tribesmen used to the desert, mounted on ponies used to the desert, trained to use horse-archery… it had the makings of a true disaster.

Which might not have been an issue for you, far enough away from any conflict that it's unlikely the enemy would ever reach you. Except for the fact that jackass, Formal, decided to "do the great honor" of asking Marcellus to volunteer as his staff mage. Even though Marcellus would have been within his rights to refuse, the position was (a) a great honor, (b) helped close the social gap between himself and Lucia, and (c) when the Lord of your _entire Province_ asks you to do something, if you're wise, you do it regardless of legal niceties.

So Marcellus marched off to war. That said, you weren't too worried about his survival. Unless he went up against some tribal arch-shaman, you estimated that Marcellus should be able to match half-a-hundred archers or a few hundred enemies in close quarters without injury. But being attached to a military fiasco would do him no favors, and the worst was _always_ possible. Lucia was besides herself with worry, and became rather clingy, another indignity to lay at Formal's feet.

Luckily, Formal seemed to know his business much better than Zorzal or anyone else who'd been up against the Knappnaians to date. Luckily for Formal that is; if something had happened to Marcellus, then Formal would have had _just enough_ time to properly regret his actions. Over the entire year, the Italican and Knappnaian forces pirouetted around each other in a dangerous and often bloody dance for position, watering holes and supply lines.

The Knappnaians only disadvantage compared to when they were raiding was that their civilian populations were far less mobile. Distracted by this concern, they managed an impressive performance, keeping their civilians and animals out of the way of the fighting. Heavy on light cavalry, Formal's forces matched the Knappnaian raiders while skillful command on both sides minimized Italican gains and kept casualties for both sides low.

The Italican forces decided to winter in Knappnai, while the unpredictable sand-storms shut down the fighting for the season and prevented any further raids against Imperial positions.

Lucia, missing her new husband yet understanding the situation, is wavering between going to join the army's camp and staying in Italica. You're sure that you can convince her one way or the other.

Being X may be trying to trap you in another war. On the other hand, it's been a decade and you miss the smell of blood and the cries of your foes.

What will you do for the next two years?


	7. Aide-de-Camp

**Post 7:** **Aide-de-Camp**

* * *

[Spoiler= "Winning Vote]

[X] Chilling in the War Camp  
-[X] As for joining the army, you…  
-[X] Recommend to go to the military camp (unlocks special Army actions, double risks for savant/inspired).  
-[X] While doing this, you…  
-[X] Continue to be a magically skilled prodigy (0 risk)  
-[X] For your time, you focus on (if Italica, choose 3, may take options more than once. If military, choose 1 from "before leaving" for Tanya, 1 from "before leaving" for Lucia, 1 "primary focus", 1 "side option"):  
-[X] Before leaving you…  
-[X] Make sure you're all ready. Get your supplies together, practice riding, find a decent (if unenchanted) short-spear to use bayonet techniques, that sort of thing. Though, you're pretty much ready already, as an old campaigner it's just habit and you can fly so screw riding.  
-[X] While Lucia, before leaving…  
-[X] Request for a band of solid veteran guardsmen from your family, though you'll likely owe a decent favor over it. (Lucia ONLY, Tanya cannot take this option). (high combat, legion or legion-veteran trained, high trustworthiness, loyal to the family)  
-[X] While with the army, you mostly… (may select more than one, in order of preference, top choice that is successful will be done)  
-[X] Serve as Marcellus' aide (direct experience with command staff of the army, little chance of combat, risk 1)  
-[X] Take a position as a protectore/officer cadet under Count Formal or one of his Legates (risk 1, get regular military cadet training plus some command experience)  
-[X] Sell your services as an enchanter to the officers/elite soldiers (risk 0, earn money and trade for loot)  
-[X] In you downtime with the army, you mostly…  
-[X] Socialize with the Italican High Society who came along.  
-[X] Train with the battlemages.  
-[X] Train with a Legion Aerial Ala Training Officer.

[/Spoiler]

* * *

 _1/1/682 - 1/1/684 of the Imperial Calendar (Age 10-12 years)._

You decided that rather than stay in Italica, it would be better for Lucia to go to the front and rejoin Marcellus. She didn't take much convincing, putting up only a token argument against.

Before you left, there was time to make some last minute preparations. You focused on making sure you were all ready for a long journey. You bought a horse, a hardy but biddable pony, and practiced your riding. You also picked up a decent quality short-spear, sized down to not be too ridiculous in your hands, which would allow you to use the rifle-and-bayonet techniques from your last life.

Unfortunately, when you went to try and get armor, you found out that no one makes armor your size without it being specially ordered, something you didn't have time for. Instead, you had to buy materials to make into armor while on the road. The food was the worst part. The best quality preserved foods were either already purchased and sent towards the Legionnaires and their officers at the front, or had been consumed over the relatively long winter. You realized you'd need to keep an eye out for birds and other targets of opportunity while travelling if you wanted to eat well. Even worse, hunting down the food that you _could_ get your hands on meant you didn't have the opportunity to enchant some flight boots for yourself.

Lucia's preparations went rather better. She'd requested a group of guardsmen from her family, and got a fairly good response. Six experienced lancers along with twenty-four medium infantry were sent over to provide protection, a group large enough to see off all but the largest raiding parties. Lucia added two large wagons for supplies, a few servants to make sure you lived in relative comfort, and her own collection of "essential" work materials, fine clothes and the like. While you couldn't prevent her from bringing all that superfluous junk on campaign, you at least made sure she had everything she'd _actually_ need.

And then you were ready to set off.

The journey had four main legs plus a rest stop in the middle. Although Knappnai was north of Italica, you had to first cross the River Row, which meant a journey along the Western Imperial Highway to the crossing. After that, you needed to follow the road to Bellnahgo, where you had a brief stop scheduled to rest up before attempting to cross the Romario mountains on the way to Tanska. After Tanska you had to leave the settled regions of the Empire and head north to Knappnai where you could finally join up with the army.

The first leg of the journey, headed towards the River Row, was a bit wet with early spring rain, but not particularly serious. After that, you had an uninteresting journey until Bellnahgo. Though a bit bored, you had time to finish your armor. With limited access to facilities and doing the work on the road you couldn't manage anything particularly fancy, but did make a set of comfortable legion-style armor in your size. It didn't do much defensively or offensively your spells couldn't do already, but at least you looked the part, and it was enchanted for enhanced comfort.

The city of Bellnahgo was where things first became interesting. You're not sure if it was just bad luck, or the place is infested, but you ended up having multiple run ins with thieves trying to cut the straps holding packs onto mules or tying down supplies on the wagons. Luckily you were used to being constantly aware of potential sniping spells; common footpads were nothing compared to that. The first group managed to escape into the crowd when you raised the alarm; lacking a shot that wouldn't cause collateral damage, and wanting to stay with the party you were left with no capture options.

The second time, you were off the horse and giving chase a moment after noticing the young thieves. As you chased them, half a dozen loitering youths stood up or came out of narrow alleyways behind you, while in front there were a baker's dozen. You'd run right into a trap set by this youth gang.

You couldn't help yourself.

You grinned.

It had been _so long_ since you'd drawn blood, after all.

"Oi, nice catch!"

"Ya, we'll have some fun with girly, and she'll sell for a lot," one of the older youths said with leer.

"Hey, guys, she looks like a noble. Are you sure…" one of the smarter ones began to think of what would happen if a young noblewoman was subject to their _gentle attentions_. Unfortunately for the thieves, he seemed to be the only one capable of realizing that the city guard would turn their full attention towards a crack-down, and that the gang would likely be sold out by their compatriots. Being enslaved and sold to a vengeful noble would be a truly horrific fate. Not that they'd have to worry; the idea that these peons could take you on was laughable.

"Hahaha. Hahahahahahah. AHAHAHAHAHA!" your shrill laugh cut through their self-aggrandizing stereotypical bullshitting and all eyes were firmly on you. "Ah. Wow. You really think _you're_ the ones who caught _me_. No, you scum. _I've_ caught _you_. But before beating you into compliance, I'll give you one chance to surrender. Less fun for me, but you'll sell for more if you're uninjured and I am, as always, a _rational_ person." You gave them a moment to process your offer. "No takers? Well, if at any point you grow a brain, simply kneel with your hands on your head."

With that last instruction, you went off, leaping twenty feet backwards, backflipping and twirling your spear around as you passed over the rearguard. It's sharp end still in a protective sheath, you smashed the front end into the back of one's head, then extended the butt into another's temple. You landed softly, elegantly, and flourished your spear.

"Come on, boys. I don't want to have to do _all_ the work, you know?" And then the brawl was on as they rushed you screaming, shoddy weapons in hand.

You swept one's legs hard enough for them to get some serious hangtime, spun and kicked another's ribs hard enough for them to bounce off the alley wall four feet to the left, brought your spear up and slammed it down onto the floating gangster's stomach. You leapt forwards, clearing a path by rolling your forward wrist, smashing the sheathed spear-head left then right against a pair of thugs heads, knocking them unconscious as they slumped down against the alley walls before you jabbed, smashing in a third thug's face.

You stepped forwards, facing another pair of thugs. The expressions on their faces were _priceless_. That mounting shock and horror as they see who you truly are. The Devil of the Rhine. Your spear in between them, you pinballed it off one body, into the other, back and forth, working them over from the knee to the head. Allowing the leftmost to slump into unconsciousness, you caught the other below the ear and with a twist of the spear knocked him off his feet before kicking him into a pair of his compatriots who all went sprawling.

You skipped over the latest idiots, daintily flicking the bronze-capped butt of your spear into their foreheads as you passed.

In the back, a pair of the youngest looking thieves looked at each other, then bolted. You took two quick steps forward before jumping up against the alley wall, spring-boarding over the half-dozen thugs who were still conscious and _not_ fleeing. You landed boot-to-face on one of the fleeing fools. As his head hit the floor, you felt his head collapse inwards around your boots. Disgusting and wasteful of his bounty, but thankfully your servants could clean your boots. Blood can stain even leather, as you can attest.

Facing the other runner, wicked grin still on your face, you wagged your finger.

"I didn't give you permission to run. Fight, surrender, or die," you said as he fell backwards, pissing himself in fear and huddling like a whipped cur against the alley's wall. Well, that was _close enough_ to surrender in your books. "And what of the rest of you?" you asked.

The largest of the remaining thugs looked around, fear in his eyes. "Scatter!" he called out, and they attempted to run.

"Tch, morons," you muttered, leaping between them and leaving them bloody and broken on the floor before sending up a flare to call Lucia and the city guard to your position. You then spent the next several days enduring Lucia's worried clucking and wondered if it was worth it.

At least the thugs rated a good bit of money; after taxes and splitting with the rest of your party, you earned seventy two thousand denarii for their sale, a little over twice a legionnaire's annual pay. Not that you really had much need for money; your shop provided about thirty thousand a year in income, Lucia gave you ten thousand a month as allowance and pay for assisting in her enchanting, and you had no real expenditures.

But cleaning up the streets is its own reward, right? Plus, after that your stay in the apparently crime-ridden Bellnahgo was peaceful.

After you left Bellnahgo, the journey to Tanska over the Romario mountains was nice and peaceful, if a bit chilly and annoying to bring wagons over the steep mountain paths.

Once past Tanska and on the rougher paths headed to Knappnai, one of your wagons unfortunately broke its rear axle passing over a particularly nasty pothole. This extended the journey, as you had to first fix the axle before continuing. You're not sure if you'd have met them anyways, or if the slow-down allowed them to gather in what they felt to be sufficient force, but a few days later you met an absolutely huge band of bandits.

Seriously, what was happening in the area that _company-sized_ groups of bandits could gather? Even your over-sized, well equipped guard force seemed tiny in comparison. As the leader of your guardsmen and the bandits began to negotiate your possible paying for passage, you considered what you should do.

At first, you thought explosion spells. _Lots_ of explosion spells. But that would give up the game.

A close-quarters bloodfest was out for the same reason.

In fact, using direct combat spells at all was a bad idea.

But, you _had_ demonstrated using telekinetic spells to launch stones at birds and other game over the journey. And Lucia knew how much a genius you were, so a logical if somewhat extreme extension of that wouldn't be out of the question. The only problem was that the captain of the guard was a bit too close.

"Captain, a word," you imperiously called out, making everyone's attention focus on you.

"Milady, I don't think now is the right time," he began, obviously frustrated by a child interjecting during such tense negotiations.

"Captain, _a word_ ," you ground out.

"A moment," he said to a laughing bandit leader, then rode back to be next to you.

"Thank you, Captain, for clearing my firing lane," you said quietly, then with a motion of your bangled right hand levitated hundreds of stones and pebbles around you. "I will give you one chance to surrender. Lie down with your hands on your heads if you wish to take it," you called out to the bandits. After the surprise wore off, the bandit leader drew his saber.

"Atta-" he began to call out, before being silenced by the booms and impact of stones breaking the sound barrier. Your stony buckshot tore swaths through the bandits, sending them screaming to the ground. A few who were on the wings were spared, and a handful in the rear escaped with relatively minor wounds. As their surviving brethren screamed, you levitated another mass of stones.

"I lied. I'll give you a _second_ chance for surrender, but no more. Now, lie down with your hands on your head. Or die. It makes no difference to me," you coldly instructed while your own party looked at you in shock and awe. The remaining bandits surrendered. After your guards went through and culled those too injured to sell, you had nineteen captives. A quick interrogation and side-trip found their base.

From the lacking physical loot, they were either extremely ineffective (unlikely due to the band's size) or sending their loot back towards some group within the Empire. Unfortunately, there was no useful intelligence to be had. Rescuing their captives proved to be much more profitable as you found a noble Italican officer's wife and the remnants of her party.

For your own performance you claimed a slave girl, Sasha Gard. She was seventeen years old, with a good bit of latent magic, an inclination towards healing, and despite being from a commoner background was a natural scholar (or nerd, take your pick). She, like the rest of the captives, had been badly _used_ , and was traumatized. Lucia actually dealt with what had happened to the captives much better than you had expected. Meanwhile Sasha adjusted well to being your slave; it was, after all, much preferable to the alternative which she had already experienced.

When you eventually arrived at the army base, your party sold the captive bandits, their loot, and redeemed the officer's wife. Your cut from all of that came to be sixty nine thousand denarii, but you valued getting Sasha much more. After all, magically capable slaves were rare and useful to you.

[center]====================[/center]

After Lucia and Marcellus had an incredibly soppy meeting, and Marcellus hugged you and thanked you for the campaign cloak and your annotated collection of tactical texts too, he asked an important question.

"So, Tanya, what are you planning on doing while you're here?" he asked.

"I'll be your aide, naturally," you stated as he grinned.

"And what does your mother have to say about that?" he asked, turning to Lucia.

"It's likely safer than the alternatives," she said with an exasperated expression. "I didn't tell you what she did to the thieves in Bellnahgo, or the bandits yet."

"Oh, what happened," he questioned, his eyes looking over you and Lucia for injuries.

"In Bellnahgo some thieves tried to take our packs. Tanya chased them down and when we found her she was in an alley with a score of gangsters she'd beaten unconscious," Lucia explained.

"It was eighteen captives and one corpse," you corrected her. Accurate reporting is the cornerstone of performance, after all. Lucia rolled her eyes and continued as if you hadn't spoken.

"And then, between here and Tanska, we were attacked by what, ninety five bandits?" she clarified as you nodded. "My guard Captain was trying to settle the matter peacefully when Tanya, calm as can be, ordered him back to her side. Then she levitated hundreds of stones and called for the bandits' surrendered. When they went to attack, she just… there's no other word for it, she slaughtered them. The stones moved fast enough to punch straight through the bandits. Only nineteen of them were in good enough condition to be taken as slaves," she said.

"Incredible. How long did you have Tanya training on combat applications of motion magic?" he asked.

" _I haven't_ ," Lucia replied. "I asked Tanya how she did it. Go on, Tanya, explain to your father how you cast that spell."

"It's fairly simple, really. I'd been using stones to take down game on the journey, it's much better than that nasty preserved stuff we'd be eating otherwise. And the only difference between one stone and dozens is number. A simple linkage net allows them to be manipulated all at once, and combining a rotational matrix with the lift instruction gives you a plane of stones. After that, it's just a point-cone push spell to send them forwards. The Captain occupied their attention for much longer than I needed to cast something so elementary," you bragged, fully playing up your image as a magical prodigy to Lucia's fond smile and Marcellus' laughter.

"I dare say half my battlemages lack the skill to do something like that to so many stones at once, no matter _how_ long they have to prepare. And of the half that are skilled enough, I can't think of many that have enough power to do so on such a scale," he said. "I'm glad my aide will be so competent." And with that, he ruffled your hair. "Now come on, I should introduce you around."

[center]====================[/center]

Unfortunately, your first few months as Marcellus' aide are an exercise in frustration. Your adorable aura was massively acting up, preventing you from being taken seriously by _anyone_. Luckily you kept your cool as your talents were utterly wasted. But then, as your aura wore off you were finally allowed to help. You mostly focused on planning out patrol routes and logistical assistance, improving the efficiency of the mage contingent.

The big breakthrough was in how the battlemages were parceled out. By conventional doctrine a number were assigned to the infantry cohorts, who were seeing very little combat in the primarily mounted raider skirmishes between Imperial cavalry and Knappnaian mounted nomads. While the battlemages were sent out with the cavalry, they were rarely in enough strength to do more than match any shamans that were with the raiders.

Instead, you instituted a policy where the cavalry would patrol in more of a clover shape, gathering up with each other at regular intervals and keeping the majority of the mages distributed with the cavalry groups most likely to make contact. Although the cavalry covered slightly less territory, the increased battlemage contingent meant that more of their engagements were victories, and that their victories were more decisive.

Before you had arrived, the Legions weren't doing well, though they had avoided any serious blunders. Spring brought many new raiders, and the Imperials were on the back foot. Your first few months, while you were having your time wasted, were relatively balanced. After your suggestion on mage-concentration was used, it gave your troops an edge. You further suggested that Count Formal purchase a dozen pagasi to allow for greater mobility and concentration of magical firepower. Marcellus told you he'd push for it, but that the flying horses were unlikely to arrive before winter.

With your first significant contribution, Marcellus started bringing you to more staff meetings and planning sessions. It didn't go well. Most of the officers' reacted to you with sentiments along the lines of "aww, isn't she just the cutest thing playing soldier!" To which you were visibly irritated, which in turn didn't exactly help your position. Overall Marcellus performed well, and took what advice you had to offer in private, showing noticeable improvement in his martial skills.

During this time you managed to install Sasha as an assistant to the medical mages, and she was busy helping and happy learning.

In your (rather copious) spare time, you mostly socialized with the Italican High Society, represented in the noble officers and what members of their families had accompanied them. Your adorable aura acted up _horribly_ here, basically turning you into a mascot. Further, "adorable" isn't always a good look in a military camp, and you had a run in with a pervert.

Luckily, you saw it coming and engineered the encounter to occur in front of a fair crowd while he was drunk.

First, you used magic to make him trip and stumble, gathering attention. As more and more people were watching, you finally let him catch up.

"Ah, Tanya," he slurred. "Tanya, Tanya, Tanya. Tiny, _sweet,_ _ **adorable**_ Tanya," he said, licking his lips as he 'cornered' you by a tent wall. You noticed several of the more sober and decent officers start to stand up to intervene. Hidden by his bulk, you gave an evil smile. It was show-time.

The pervert reached out towards you, only to have you snatch his hand mid-air. With a quick twist, you had him in a wrist lock. As the good Samaritans were brought up short by your actions, you exerted a bit of pressure, forcing your victim to his knees.

"Do you know something?" you said rhetorically, your voice somehow carrying over the entire gathering despite your conversational tone. "There are _so many_ things annoying me right now. First, _I didn't give you permission to touch me, you_ _ **filthy worm!**_ " And with that, you send a pulse of pure pain through him, twisting the medimagic anesthetic spell to a darker purpose. His spine went taught as he screamed.

"Second, I am _tired_ of being called _adorable!_ Let me remind you of a simple truth. I am among the _strongest mages in this entire army_! And I expect some _respect_!" you say, flaring his pain receptors again. You let it last longer this time until he's at his absolute physical limit, then released the spell. He was left twitching, moaning in pain, eyes wide with fear.

"I hope I've made myself clear," you stated, sweeping your gaze over the suddenly sheepish gathering. And it seemed you had; your victim, though a shameless pervert, was an accomplished military man whose toughness was well known. And you'd broken him in front of a collection of command element officers. You wouldn't face any more issues with those officers and your adorableness.

At least Lucia was happy being with her husband. Otherwise the trip was more aggravation than it was worth.

In those last months of your first year with the army, the Imperial forces gained serious advantage in the ongoing conflict. Although there was no decisive engagement, the legions destroyed a few of the larger raiding groups and captured an entire tribe before it could flee, including all the civilians.

The winter was relatively peaceful, but the new year brought serious gains. Spring continued and extended the recent Imperial advances as the now pegasi-mounted battlemage group proved their worth as they helped bring about dozens of victories. They crushed the smaller raiding groups, while enemy shamans were suppressed and eliminated, and the larger groups were located, raided and harried until legion combat groups could show up and destroy them. You and the other officers were too busy organizing advances and collating information from the victories to socialize much.

As spring moved towards summer, you were lucky not to catch food poisoning. Everyone else at your mess table did, but it seemed that your constitution was too strong for that. Further, your advice as to how the cavalry groups could be more efficient was tried by the mounted auxilia units, further improving the Imperial army's advantage over the Knappnaian barbarians. Due to the mounting losses amongst their raiders, the enemy was forced to form a larger army and meet the legions in battle. Otherwise the army would have made unacceptable progress towards essential food-producing areas, important shrines and trading centers.

The battle seemed to be starting off well. You were ready to kick ass, and given permission to do so. Given your spare time, you'd "developed" a fair library of combat magic, so it wouldn't be too surprising for you to unleash some hell. Marcellus had deployed his mages competently, and Count Formal was using standard legion doctrine as the army advanced towards the enemy positions.

The enemy seemed to have taken an advantageous position on a sand dune, but it wasn't so advantageous as to preclude an assault.

And then everything went wrong.

The Imperial archers had just advanced to the front, ready to begin engaging the enemy when they were ambushed. The enemy general had had some men dig pits, then cover them with blankets and sand. As the archers advanced to these positions the enemy sprung out, attacking the archers in close quarters. The archers did better than you expected, and withdrew in good order despite the casualties. More heavily armored and skilled at close-in work than the Knappnaians (or you) had expected, the archers were bloodied but not beaten.

At the same time, the enemy cavalry charged your own cavalry while flanking forces which had been hidden by the terrain viciously targeted the Imperial cavalry's sides and rear. A less competent commander might have panicked, split his forces and experienced defeat in detail. Luckily for the Empire and Count Formal, his cavalry commander was far more capable than that. The Imperial cavalry charged _through_ the lighter enemy blocking force as their heavier horses and armor allowed them to smash through the nomad light cavalry who had finally given the Imperial horse what it most wanted – a straight fight rather than a skirmish.

As the flankers got tangled with their own troops, the Imperial cavalry reformed, came around, and smashed the enemy light cavalry, reaping a bloody harvest.

Meanwhile above the battlefield the Knappnaian general seemed to have scratched together a motley collection of Rocs, pagasi-archers and a few wyverns. Though a surprise strategically, they didn't manage the kind of tactical surprise needed to match drakes and pagasi-mages. The Imperial Aerial Ala first took advantage, then swept away the Knappnaian aerial forces in a decisive victory.

On the ground, things were going somewhat worse. The Knappnaian shamans had corralled together a horde of djinn, spirits of sand and storm and destruction, then released them on the Imperial lines. The mages weren't positioned for such a sudden and close range attack, and the djinn reaped a bloody harvest among the Imperial legionnaires and auxilia. It might have gone terribly, but before the infantry could buckle or break, the Imperial mages struck back.

Under you quick command, they engaged in "counter-battery" fire. After all, it was likely the Djinn weren't acting on their own will, but rather that of the enemy magicians. Your mages throughout the army targeted the enemy shamans positions, sensing the concentration of mana. As the enemy casters came under fire, they lost control of the djinn who began to run amok. Most of the djinn turned back, angered by their controllers, and attacked the low quality Knappnaian foot.

The Knappnaian foot had more in common with a peasant levy than professional troops. Faced with an enemy which occupied the cultural equivalent of the boogeyman, the enemy foot broke and ran. That sort of thing tends to be infectious for a losing army, and as they saw the foot flee the rest of the army followed.

Unfortunately the Imperial cavalry was tired from their combat, and the enemy cavalry lighter and more used to desert conditions. The enemy foot was fleeing literal devils, which leant them quite the turn of speed, while the Imperial foot needed to re-order after everything that happened. Plus, any pursuit from the foot would have gone _through_ the djinn, which your men weren't terribly excited about.

"Dad, permission to pursue?" you asked excitedly to Marcellus.

"You can levitate and bombard them, but don't actually chase them down. Your mother would kill me if you were so much as scratched after the battle was already won," he explained to your pleading gaze.

Still, given aiming spells, a nice levitation-derived viewpoint, and large clumps of enemies you were pretty effective. You lost yourself a bit to the blood-haze, but people seemed to assume it was an issue of age, inexperience and battle-fumes rather than true bloodlust as you accelerated rocks beyond the speed of sound to strike down the enemy while prioritizing anyone wearing armor, riding a horse, or giving orders.

You succeeded in your mission, killing the flashiest Knappnaians before they could get too far away for believable engagement and ensuring that the retreat would become a rout.

Meanwhile the enemy aerial forces were utterly destroyed. Enemy shamans seemed to do better, as they could shield from Imperial attacks and were much less obvious than the military leaders. Those that survived the counter-battery likely got out relatively fine.

Overall, the victory was huge. The Empire had taken out all of the commanders willing to work together, and each tribe blamed the others for their defeat. Beyond that, although many of the enemy survived the battlefield due to the early rout, retreating into the desert without supplies is the sort of fatal mistake people only make once.

The loot was pretty good. For your share, you got seventy three thousand denarii worth of plunder. You also got among the first pick of slaves. Three of the enemy casters survived capture and were young enough to be re-trained. One was a magically weak but reasonably skilled boy with a focus in geology, capable of finding or creating wells and other water sources in the desert. Another was an unskilled shamaness specializing in animals, a magically mediocre escaped slave girl with a murderous temper. The last was a young girl, trained in pyromancy, reasonably skilled for her age with strong magic. She wasn't too happy with being a slave, but preferred a strong female mistress to her alternatives.

You ended up taking the third of the available slaves, the pyromancer Aisha Zaman. The other two were snatched up by others from the army's mages, though you suspected the animal-shamaness would end up in a coliseum.

Following the battle, as summer transitioned to fall the Empire mopped up the Knappnaian groups in the region. It wasn't just one crushing victory, but a series of them. Without enough raiders to slow the Imperial advance, the softer civilian targets fell one after another. Remnants of the most hostile tribes were curshed and captured, shamans suppressed and eliminated, larger groups of refugees located and enslaved.

The remnants of your enemies and those tribes clever enough not to join their foolish army were all quick to bend the knee after this, offering tribute and obedience in return for a policy of benign neglect.

You were kept mostly busy at the camp. Lucia, glad her little darling made it through the battle without injury, didn't want you out of her sight. Meanwhile, you were busy dealing with your new slave, and being feted by the other officers as the "Little Hero" of the battle.

As the campaign came to a satisfactory close, the bulk of the army returned to Italica, leaving behind some garrison and quick reaction forces to maintain order. The march back was uneventful, and as the army dispersed you were given the end-of-campaign loot and pay, a combined two-hundred-thirteen thousand denarii.

Your reputation was similarly golden. Small, adorable and utterly lethal, you were seen as something of a mascot by the Italican Legions.

Meanwhile, Lucia was just glad to be home. It was a long trip, and she wanted her workshop and creature comforts. But, it was better than missing Marcellus for two years.

As for your slaves, on the way back Aisha learned to talk intelligibly and read and write slowly, which was great.

Now, what do you plan on doing next?


	8. Party

**Post 8: Party**

* * *

[Spoiler= "Winning Vote]

[X] Plan Revised Honeyed Words and the Rod  
-[X] While doing this, you…  
-[x] Continue as a magical prodigy  
-[X] As for your slaves, you…  
-[X] Take a personal hand. (1 personal action to train either/both slave/s)  
-[X] Train Aishah by…  
-[x] Breaking her in, conditioning her to be totally loyal, then begin teaching basic combat mechanimagic (note, more effective taken with "produce a set of mechanimagical devices" under personal enchanting projects)  
-[X] Those raised in the wilds respect strength and will, but what greater will is there of one who has defied a self professed god, what greater strength than one forged through the crucible of a burgeoning world war? Let the steel of your soul sing and the voice of command in your voice ring as you teach Aishah of Discipline and True Strength. Spare not the rod but earnestly highly her accomplishments. Capstone her loyalty by forging her an engine of war that strengthens the power at her fingertips.  
-[X] Train Sasha by…  
-[X] Breaking her in, conditioning her to be totally loyal, then begin teaching basic combat mechanimagic (note, more effective taken with "produce a set of mechanimagical devices" under personal enchanting projects)  
-[X] A broken soul knows pain, but hungers for affection and a lover of books broken by the rod yearns for learning. Reshape her crestfallen spirit with honeyied words of praise, and encourage her to continue learning to heal others by teaching her Imperial Medimagic, and entice her hungry intellect by allowing her to continue her studies suggesting a focus on administrative matters.  
-[X] Produce a set of mechanimagical devices to begin training subordinates ( _note, same as personal enchanting option)_. **(1 Personal Action)**  
-[X] Construct a specialized training facility on some of Lucia's unused land (bonus to training, without this halves number of recruits which can be trained at a time)  
-[X] Have someone else train Sasha… (free action, list in order of priority)  
-[X] Hire Tullius to train her in healing (expected cost D120,000, may not agree)  
-[x] Ask Lucia to train Sasha as an assistant enchanter (may not agree)  
-[X] Tell Lucia's Majordomo to train her as a personal maid (majordomo guaranteed to agree)  
-[X] Have someone else train Aisha… (free action, list in order of priority)  
-[X] Ask Marcellus to train Aisha as a combatant/bodyguard (may not agree)

[/Spoiler]

* * *

 _1/1/684 - 1/1/686 of the Imperial Calendar (Age 12-14 years)._

For the next two years you decided to focus on setting up the basis for your eventual air mage unit. You needed _something_ to focus on, and knowing Being X you'll need a military force sooner or later. You're just hoping for the _later_.

The first thing to do was to figure out how you were going to train your new troop. Unlike when you were an Imperial Air Mage, you couldn't rely on nationalism to motivate or a government to prevent desertion. Further, you weren't just training an elite force, better than their contemporaries but still on the same military continuum. No, you were introducing entirely novel spells, magical concepts and utilization methods which are a quantum jump from what your new world has previously practiced. Which meant you needed to ensure secrecy.

Which meant you needed to create unbreakable _personal_ loyalty.

That sort of personal loyalty is beyond typical military training instilled by a drill instructor. A drill instructor is mostly on the "stick" side of "carrot and stick". They are supposed to instill basic skills, discipline, and most importantly the military bearing and obedience needed to be an effective soldier. By forcing recruits to and occasionally past their breaking points, the instructor forces them to band together to survive. They build esprit de corps, but at the end of the day the recruits aren't really _loyal_ to the DI.

For you to succeed in training Aisha and Sasha, you realized you needed to do three things. First, they had to be broken down, like a trainer breaking a horse to harness. They had to be conditioned to obey, even (or especially) when they didn't think an action was possible. Second, you needed to mix punishment, typically in the form of physical training, with emotional support and some skinship. This would build up their dependency on you. Third, they had to be reshaped so that their moral framework and attitudes were practical.

Like any recruit-trainer, you had to do all of this while being an impossible superior paragon, a divine avatar of the values you were instilling. Then, of course, you had to make them effective combat mages. But, given your experiences, those two parts would be easy.

The test of your success would be when Sasha and Aisha took oaths. There was a particular oath to Deldort that slaves and owners could take. The owner had to put up a sizeable assurance, and swear to free the slave with no future threat, if the slave desired. The slave, in return, had to _genuinely_ swear eternal loyalty. It was a form of vassalage oath, but one that would guarantee lifelong service. Oathsworn were some of the highest ranking and most valued servants for that reason. The oath itself, fueled by the promise of wealth and liberty balanced against willing service and loyalty, had been known to overcome the threat of loved-ones held hostage and powerful mind-altering magics. On the other hand, if the oath failed, you'd be out a magically capable slave.

You decided it was worth the risk to maintain magical security.

Aisha took to the training like a fish to water. She found purpose and meaning as you ran her into the ground, punished her for the most minor mistakes folding clothes, kept her going past her limits again and again, then hugged her, spoke to her about her issues, taught her about your philosophies on hierarchy and position. After a few months, you thought her ready to take her oath, and began to train her as an assistant team leader for future expansion of your air mages.

The reason _why_ you had to train her as an ATL before she took her oath was Sasha. You hadn't realized how emotionally damaged she was before training started. As a result, you had to take a _very_ different approach for those first few months. While Aisha was running laps, or sweating in a front leaning rest, Sasha was being taught meditative techniques and gradually coming to, if not peace, then at least an understanding of what had happened to her. Then, when Aisha was past that initial training you trained Sasha.

Sasha needed a lot more emotional support through the training, and broke down far more frequently than Aisha did. If you'd been training both at the same time it could have been problematic, and likely would have caused inefficiencies in the training or personal issues between your two followers. But since Aisha was being forced to read and re-read what books on tactics you had, and work on problems you set her, you had time to train Sasha properly.

And at the end, it was highly effective. Both were deeply loyal to you before they took their oaths. Afterwards, you had a pair of devotees, fanatics who heard your word and orders the same way a priest heard the word of a god.

That said Sasha's PTSD may be something to bear in mind in the future, though it was managed through your initial processing.

Following their becoming Oathsworn, and taking the oaths of Rondel, you put them through aerial mage training.

Part of that included, of course, producing a set of mechanimagical devices. You managed to produce five casting devices before you got bored and started experimenting with flight boots. Imperial Mechanimagic style flight-devices were still beyond you; they were highly advanced enchantments, and needed enchanted machines to produce the parts and help lay the specialized enchantments on _those_ parts… It was more expensive, in time and progress, than you had time for. You did, however, manage to come up with a design for flight boots which significantly improved the speed and flight-time above that possible with a casting device alone. You ended up creating a half-dozen of these boots, so in all you had three sets of casting devices and boots left over after equipping Sasha and Aisha.

Once again, Aisha excelled in her training. By the time you were done, she demonstrated enough promise to be a squad leader in your 203rd. You decided to extend her training, hoping to further improve her skills, but she had reached a bottleneck. You might be able to help her breakthrough in the future, but decided that other skills were more important in the moment.

You asked Marcellus if he might continue with her and teach her what he thought she should know, but after he saw her perform he said it would be too difficult to improve her performance given his duties in Formal's court. As a result, you ended up training Aisha into an effective and efficient adjutant to serve as your assistant. In the future, you'll be able to get more done, or get the same job done but better with Aisha's assistance.

Sasha meanwhile did well enough with her training. Enough to be a member of the 203rd, but not enough to be a leader within it. On the other hand, her training as a medic with Tullius went well, and combined with her natural scholarly attitude and experience helping the Italican Legion doctors she has become a great healer.

You were also pleased by how well Aisha and Sasha got along. Despite being very different in temperament, age, and nationality, they were good friends. And that was _before_ taking into account how much they wanted to make you happy.

As the training was ongoing, but past the loyalty formation, you built a specialized training facility. You asked Lucia for a bit of unused land, and found a suitable piece a couple days journey from Italica. It was a bit distant and off the beaten track, but wagons _could_ get there. There was a broad range of terrain, including semi-mountainous and forested, which was good for training. The base itself wasn't located somewhere naturally defensible, though once you cleared a bit of forest and undergrowth there were decent lines of fire.

A mid-sized hunting cabin was already there, but you and Lucia improved on the site significantly. Lucia, after seeing your flight boots in action, had asked if she could make herself and Marcellus a copy. They weren't quite as effective without a casting device and training in the specific aerial mage spells, but the boots were still much better than anything Lucia had seen or used before, and as such she was more interested than usual (and she was usually _very_ interested) in helping you. Plus, it meant that your base was only a half-hour's flight from your home.

Between the two of you, you had a roman style villa constructed, with room for about 80 people. Roman villas are naturally defensible, with guarded entrances. Windows and gardens are all in an interior courtyard, enclosed by the villa, allowing for an uninterrupted outer wall. Around the villa you added a thick defensive earthen wall, and a staked ditch.

As for the internal food and water supply, the water table was high enough for a well and after you mentioned the idea of a greenhouse, Lucia came up with and installed a magically powered underground farm. You had everything, from typical lettuces and grains to tomatoes and strawberries. Some chickens and cows in the courtyard provided eggs and milk. Lucia was thinking about making another for her home, to provide off-season and exotic fruits and vegetables.

The best part though was the workshop and armory. Lucia was going through a phase where she'd been thinking about upgrading her own workshop, and used it as a testbed for new enchanted focus devices, allowing semi-automation. You worked in a set of modern mechanimagical cut-outs and shields for working with high energy devices. Overall, production there would be double what you could achieve normally, and it would take a truly improbable series of events to cause a significant enough situation to result in an industrial disaster.

With half-a-dozen slaves and servants assigned as staff, you had your own house (for when you wanted it), and a good base for future training. Though you probably _should_ come up with a name for it.

Overall, you were very happy with your preparations for creating your own personal guard of aerial mages. Lucia was neither particularly glad nor upset with the situation, merely happy that you were happy. Marcellus, on the other hand, thought you were a bit young to be establishing your household, and wasn't sure you should be gathering a unit of battlemages, but was willing to let sleeping dogs lie.

The Empire, over the first year, saw a good harvest. This wasn't good news for Italica, however, as the harvest wasn't _as much_ better, so the Empire-wide decrease in the price of food hit Italican exports. The second year, you noticed that politics in the Empire seemed to be starting again. Not to the point that they were before the attempted coup, but enough to at least be called _politics_ rather than just _currying favor with the Emperor_. That second year Italica's harvest was good, causing people to have a bit more money to spend. Which was, as ever, good for you and Lucia.

The most important event of 685 was the Imperial visit. The Emperor and family were coming, and you were invited to the party.

The party was held at Count Formal's palace. The guests milled around the entrance courtyard, slowly filtering in from being dropped off by carriage or palanquin. Which was when you showed up with your parents, Sasha and Aisha playing attendant. The five of you flew in a demonstration of power. Not only were flight-capable mages rare, but they were powerful. Effectively flying artillery, an aerial mage was feared not only for their puissance on the battlefield, but also as assassins. That third dimension to an assault meant that aerial mages could easily access internal courtyards and avoid almost all defenses. Few houses, even senatorial ones, could field five aerial mages.

The crowd was dressed in an almost disgustingly exquisite fashion. Men and women wore the finest cloths, many bedecked in jewels and gold worth more than most could earn in their entire lives. What looked to be a full cohort of Imperial Guards stood watch from the corners and walls, unmoving in their dress uniforms and armor. Aisha and Sasha peeled off to go to the servants gathering, hopefully learning some interesting rumors. You had instructed them to spend the evening spreading contradictory rumors about you to all and sundry; the tactic had, after all, served you well in your past life.

Soon enough your party was greeted. As one of the social, financial and military elite, you ranked high enough to be greeted directly by the Count who was himself accompanied by the second prince of the Empire, Diabo.

Luckily your adorable aura was mostly functional, and you were only cooed over a small amount by the ladies present as the party progressed. Eventually you found a quiet, shadowed space, partially hidden by columns where you could take a moment to relax. A bit bored, you decided to try and see what conversations you could hear nearby, which was when you noticed the Emperor speaking with the Count.

They were talking about the Imperial Princess, Pina Co Lada. An absolutely hilarious name. Like being named Lord Tequila Sunrise or something. She was three or four years older than you, and like many young ladies apparently obsessed with martial prowess. _Unlike_ most ladies, however, she was more interested in improving her _own_ prowess than that of some idealized knightly courtier.

Good on her. Though she was sort of screwed by being a woman. Seriously, being a woman (and not a mage) is a serious issue in a sword fight. Being on the average smaller, weaker and lighter sets you back facing a heavily armored warrior. A female warrior whose capability in close quarters is three or four standard deviations above the average for their training might be able to match a male who is two or three standard deviations above. And you only need to lose one fight in a battle. Luckily her father seemed to realize this, and was adamant about keeping her unit on ceremonial purposes, though he did note that at least they'd be a last line of defense in the event of another attempted coup.

"Hahaha," Formal chuckled as the Emperor related some of the funnier incidences from Pina's training. "She reminds me a little of young Tanya."

"Young Tanya?" the Emperor asked, indicating his interest in the subject.

"Mmm. She's Lucia Longina's adopted daughter and student. Lucia is the top enchanter in the region, she mostly does high fashion, art, that sort of thing," Formal explained.

"I've heard of her, a number of Italican courtiers gained some small fame by wearing her creations to court," the Emperor replied.

"Yes. Lucia's husband, Marcellus Iuvenalis, served as my Mage Prefect on the Knappnaia campaign. They'd just been married and weren't willing to be separated for so many years, so Lucia and Tanya showed up in spring of the second year of the campaign. Lucia didn't take on any military duties, though she did do some enchantments for the officers. Tanya though, who was ten at the time, decided that she'd be serving as Marcellus's aide," the Count said. "I was, as you may imagine, a bit amused but decided to humor them. It was good for morale, if nothing else, the girl is quite adorable."

 _Bastard_ , you thought to yourself. _Don't describe me like that!_

"Was she any good?" the Emperor asked.

"Surprisingly, _yes_. The girl came up with a better patrol schedule for the mages to accompany raiding groups. It improved their performance a fair amount. And it was even better after we started mounting a magical fast reaction group on pegasi; then they could cover half a dozen patrol groups. The concentrated magical force was highly effective," the Count explained.

"I'd heard about that. So those were Tanya's idea?" the Emperor questioned.

"Yes," the Count said before an odd expression passed his face. "The girl is _quite_ sharp in general. One of my officers, a beast both on and off the field, accosted her at one point. Before anyone could interfere, she had him kneeling on the ground, some application of physical magic no doubt. But then she made him _scream_. It was… haunting. And disturbing. Her expression showed the same faint humor that she had when someone made a good joke during dinner. She'd been having some trouble being taken seriously before that, but after, well… no one who saw that wanted to disrespect her too much."

"Impressive. Did she see any actual battle?"

"Yes, but only at the end. That said…" At this point, you eavesdropping was interrupted by the appearance of a drunken man in gold-brushed dress armor. Judging by the purple cape, this was Zorzal, first Prince of the empire.

"Haa," he panted into your face, his alcohol tinged breath making you recoil. "You, girl. You look good enough. How about you accompany me for some sport?" he asked. _Fucking creep_ , you thought. _I'm 14!_ Plus, you like girls. You refuse to let Being X change your sexual preference.

"No, thank you," you replied cooly. "But I'm sure if you want some _sport_ that the Count's servants can find you a slave."

"Bah," he refused, leering. "I feel like _you_. So adorable. Breaking you would be a rare treat. Are you refusing your prince?" he asked arrogantly, a disgusting expression on his face. If he were anyone _but_ a prince, his screams would have been drowning out the music. You gritted your teeth.

"I am both a noble and a student sage of Rondel, _your highness_ ," you ground out. "I have no desire to _sport_ with you, and less to be "broken". Thrice said and done, I refuse! Good evening," you said, eyes blazing, then bowed lightly and began to leave only for him to grab your wrist.

That little shit!

You lost it for a moment, and by the time you'd regained control over your emotions he was unconscious on the floor, a puddle of vomit spreading from his form. You'd used a wrist lock to make him kneel, then a nerve excitement spell on his brain to incapacitate him. You hoped it would damage his short term memory, and the shock allowed you to contract all his vocal apparatus so he didn't make a sound before he passed out from the pain and vomited. You knelt down, avoiding the spreading pool of _ick_ , and checked his wrist. A light sprain only. Good! Taking a couple looks around, you noticed that no one had seen you, and that the Imperial guard nearby were guarding the entrance to the space but not looking in.

So, you went to a nearby window and after checking the coast was clear jumped out to get away clean. You patted yourself on the back for dealing with a difficult situation _without_ causing an incident. Though you later heard that after this party Zorzal's behavior became more erratic, cruel and paranoid to the point that whispers of his evil reached even Italica.

More disturbing, it seemed he now had a general dislike for small, attractive blondes as they reminded him of something painful. Although he was rude and dismissive of them when he had to interact with them in public, there were other rumors as to how he "subjugated" them in private. You'd definitely want to avoid the prince in the future.

You wandered the gardens for a quarter hour or so generally avoiding other people and hoping that the night wouldn't get any worse when one of the Emperor's attendants found you. Apparently the Emperor wanted to meet you personally.

After heading back inside, you approached the Emperor and curtsied. You saw your parents nearby; it wouldn't have been proper to have you introduced with them missing, especially as you were not just your mother's adopted daughter, but her student in her persona of a Sage of Rondel.

"Rise and approach, Lady Tanya," he ordered.

"Thank you, your majesty," you said. He looked you up and down, then snorted.

"You don't look as fierce as your actions indicate," he said.

"With magic, sire, appearances are often deceiving," you replied, triggering your dress to change its pattern. He laughed.

"Indeed. But you are far beyond most mages, especially given your age," he said, fishing. You held your tongue, and he grinned. "I'm not sure if I should be glad or depressed that there aren't more like you."

"For my part, majesty, I'm glad. It would be terrible to be something _commonplace_ ," you answered. Judging from his expression, the Emperor was amused.

"Quite, quite. I heard you had ideas for how to use battlemages. Would you expand on them?" he asked. Ah, here it was. _The Test._ You straightened up, adopting a semi-formal stance, and began to speak.

"Typically, the Empire uses mages in a support setting. Combat mages are most often used in a tactically defensive manner, countering enemy mages or providing larger scale shields to protect the Legions. But this ignores the breakthrough potential of battle mages, and doesn't make use of maneuver warfare. By increasing mobility, either through use of normal mounts or preferably pegasi, the mages assigned to a larger portion of the line of battle can be concentrated and moved about as necessary.

"By being concentrated, they can overwhelm enemy mages in magical duels, and by establishing more constant formations of specific mages they can develop multi-caster magics to have a larger effect on the battlefield.

"That's merely an expansion on their typical activities though. What mages should really be used for is rapid strikes. By concentrating several squads of mages together, they can lay down enough firepower to breakthrough the enemy's line of battle, opening up even heavy infantry spear-walls for a cavalry charge before withdrawing to recover their energies. Apart from pitched battles, battlemages represent a uniquely effective force for raiding, harassing, and scouting, especially if given aerial mounts," you argued.

"Hmmm… But it would seem that under such a plan, the Empire would need to massively expand the number of battlemages. Italica, being relatively close to Rondel, would be hard pressed to field such a number of combat magicians, let alone provinces with less of a magical tradition," the Emperor said.

"Preferably, yes. Initially, increasing mobility to improve the number of troops the mages can support should free up at least one group to serve as a reserve, striking or supporting as is needed. But long term, increasing the number of combat mages and expert archers should be a focus for the Empire's military. Each has the same or similar supply demands to a legionnaire, yet both are worth several squads in a pitched battle. Beyond that, properly employed, they should have higher survivability than their offensive potential would indicate," you replied.

"So how would you go about _getting_ those mages?" the Emperor asked.

"I would look through the mages currently or previously in service with the Legions, and look for at least a pair within each magical specialty. Kinetics, pyromancers, healers, and so on. I would then have them come up with a standardized training regimen for their specialties, as well as tactics and strategies on how they should be employed; that last part should also include consultation with the more effective officers who have commanded them. Then, I would employ enchanters to devise a tool to test magical potential, and test incoming recruits. Those that have significant magical potential could then be trained as combat mages, serving their time in the Legions before retiring as Mage Knights," you said, laying out a training schedule.

"Ha!" the Emperor exclaimed. "An interesting idea. And where would you see yourself in this?"

"Currently, outside of it, majesty. As a Rondelian Mage, my oaths make it difficult to involve myself overmuch in training without my subordinate students becoming Rondelian mages themselves; our legal rights are more extensive than is desirable for the typical military member. On the other hand, the type of training used to produced battlemages followed by a battlemage's military duties is unlikely to allow them to reach the levels of magical power occupied by the top sages or archmages of Rondel. That said, our oaths do allow for service after our training, at our own will," you explained, avoiding any immediate entanglements but leaving the possibility open in the future.

"Well, Lady Tanya, it has been a great pleasure to meet you. I look forward to seeing you at Court in the future."

"Thank you, majesty," you said, bowing your head in gratitude.

"Not at all, not at all. Have you met my daughter, Pina Co Lada?" he asked.

"I have not had the pleasure, majesty," you replied.

"Well, I can see her over there looking pained by some of those men. Perhaps you might rescue her?" he suggested, smiling.

"It would be my pleasure, majesty," you answered with a grin. You curtsied, he nodded, and you left to 'rescue' the princess.

Unfortunately, the talk with Pina did not go as well as the one with the Emperor. It didn't go well _at all_ in fact. She was a spoiled brat, with delusions of competency and a lack of martial merit. Further, she saw you as an overly cute cuddle-creature, far too adorable to be any good at combat. Even worse, she refused to consider you as anything other than a little kid.

You reacted well, given the public nature of the conversation, and managed to avoid challenging her to a duel directly. That said, you couldn't allow her denigration of you to go publicly unanswered or you'd never get over the resulting reputation. So, instead, you forced her into a situation where both of your top subordinates would duel and had Aisha summoned.

Soon enough, you had had a decent sized piece of lawn cleared for the fight. The gossip about it spread quickly, and everyone seemed interested in watching the fight between Sir Grey, a well reputed veteran of the Imperial Guard Knights, and the pre-teen Aisha, a retainer to the locally famous Tanya Longina.

Because of the crowd, you had special instructions.

"Aisha, I expect you to win. Otherwise I might have to entirely retrain you," you said, sarcastically threatening her. She shuddered.

"Yes, milady!" Aisha answered strongly.

"Further, the crowd precludes distance casting and we don't want to damage the Count's palace. Accelerate and beat him in close," you ordered.

"Yes, milady!" she replied.

"And Aisha, do remember it's to first blood. I'd hate for the Emperor to have to find his daughter a new bodyguard," you said.

"Yes, milady!"

"Very well. Now get me a victory."

"Of course, milady!"

With that said, you wanted to ensure Grey fought to his fullest. After all, this was an exhibition as much as anything else, a way to gain honor and standing after Pina had disparaged your talents.

"Sir Grey," you called out. "I expect you to fight to your fullest. If you don't then win or lose, you'd bring dishonor to his majesty."

"Of course, Lady Tanya," he replied in a loud voice.

An Imperial Guard officer who had been drafted as referee stood between the two combatants who were twenty yards apart from each other, a handkerchief in hand.

"I present, representing Princess Pina Co Lada, Sir Grey Co Aldo of the Imperial Order of the Rose. Representing Lady Tanya Longina, the Oathsworn Rondelian Mage Aisha Zaman. When the cloth hits the ground, the combat begins. No distance attacks are allowed, the combat is to first blood per the coda imperialis duello. Am I understood?"

"You are," Aisha answered.

"Yes, I understand," Grey replied.

"Very well. May your actions see honor beneath the gazes of the gods. I will count to three and drop the cloth. One. Two. Three," the referee said, then dropped the cloth.

Aisha immediately _rocketed_ forwards, a spray of dirt disturbed by her passing and her spear raised to slash. Grey was obviously surprised by her speed, and barely imposed his sword in a parry. Unfortunately, against the _projected edge_ that Aisha was using his sword proved wholly insufficient, and the blade of her spear cut through the metal without slowing before coming to a rest against his neck, a single drop of blood falling to the ground a moment after the front third of his blade.

"Match! Aisha Zaman, Oathsworn to Lady Tanya Longina has defeated Sir Grey Co Aldo. Let no arguments or antagonisms arise from this combat," the referee intoned, finishing the traditional declaration. Aisha removed her spear, and returned to your side where you patted her on the shoulder.

"Well done, Aisha," you said with a smile.

"Thank you, milady," she beamed.

Peoples' reactions were _hilarious_. Pina and her Rose Knights seemed incapable of understanding what had just happened. Grey was not just a legitimate bad-ass (after all, you don't get made a princess' personal bodyguard for nothing), but he was, to the Rose knights, the untouchable badass who trained them. To see him defeated, by a twelve year old girl especially, was just too much.

The nobles, on the other hand, were highly impressed, especially after the news went around that Aisha had only been under your training for two years. If she'd used flashy artillery magic it would still have been impressive, but to defeat an elite knight like Grey in _close quarters combat_ was intense. The Emperor, watching from a balcony, was likewise highly impressed.

Pina, however… well, she is _not_ a fan of yours, especially after seeing how much her somewhat distant father approved of you. In fact, he approved so much that he offered two possible deals.

The first deal, you would get a fair sized estate and initial purse, as well as up to eight slaves a year with at least decent magical potential. They would be yours. In return, you had to join the Expeditionary Force going through a magical portal which he was planning on opening in a year and a half. Beyond that, you and each recruit would owe up to a maximum of six months of military service per year with a maximum total of four years military service total. If things went well, the recruit pool might be expanded.

The second deal, you would get much more land, money and a title. You would become the Imperial Aerial Mage Prefect in the Imperial army, and be responsible for training a force of Imperial aerial mages. You would report to the Imperial Family and whoever they attached you to. Which would have meant more Zorzal and Pina… Not really an option.

After some further negotiation, you would be allowed to preferentially join up with the Italican legions under the first deal. The Emperor gave you until he left to make your decision on which, if any, deal you would take.

Enter Mom and Dad. Lucia, who had been doing reasonably well at the party, even if the political scene wasn't really her favorite, thought you should pretty much do whatever you wanted. She's supportive like that. Marcellus, who found the party a bit political and blue-blooded but was doing well nonetheless, had much stronger opinions. Namely, _don't take the deal_. You were too young and darling in his eyes. Moreover, you'd shown you could do this on your own, so why shackle yourself with service?

Instead, he turned to Lucia and asked her if she would be willing to be your aerial mage unit's patron, rather than the Emperor. She agreed, and laid out a pretty generous offer. Basically, she'd give you the income from a few of her properties for a budget, and deal with slave dealers for potential mage recruits in the right age group. In return, you might occasionally be asked to provide some of your mages for her and her extended family, much in the way that Lucia borrowed a group of guards to travel to Knappnaia. This wouldn't be for free, however; you'd bank favors for providing mages, and the only debt you'd be taking on would be to repay the favor Lucia owed her family for those guards. Not onerous at all, and you don't see much reason why you wouldn't take your adoptive mother's offer.

The Emperor didn't manage any good arguments why you should take his deal over Lucia's, though he did emphasize that you and any mages you train could always find honor and wealth with the Legions. Lucia seemed to get a bit of a "helicopter parent" reputation from this, but given your age, adorableness, and the fact that you're her student it wasn't seen as unreasonable.

Other than that, you have an invitation to the Gate Expedition which will be gathering in Italica in 16 months. You're not sure whether you should go or not. On the one hand, opening cross-dimensional gateways, even with divine support, sounds the beginning of _a lot_ of magical apocalypse stories. Being there might let you try and help contain the inevitable clusterfuck (here's glaring at _you,_ Being X). On the other hand, being there might motivate Being X to make it _even worse_ than it would have been otherwise. And then you'd be stuck _directly at ground zero_.

Hmmm… decisions. Plus, of course, there's what to do _until_ the expedition…


	9. First Aerial Company

**Post 9: First Aerial Company.**

* * *

[Spoiler= "Winning Vote"]

[X] Plan Mercenary Squadron

-[X] Free Actions:

-[X] Take a deal: [Free]

-[X] Lucia's deal (you like this deal): Free recruiting actions, budget to establish force.

-[X] As for your Oathsworn, you…

-[X] Have Aisha… [Free]

-[X] Run extra combat drills for the new recruits (improves combat skill and gains experience as sub-officer)

-[X] Have Sasha…(listed in order of priority) [Free]

-[X] Hire Tullius to train her in healing (expected cost D120,000, may not agree)

-[X] Train combat medics out of new recruits (requires new recruits)

-[X] Recruit new mages… [Free]

-[X] Have whoever you made a deal with visit the slave markets, keeping an eye out on those with magical potential. (Free Action, requires deal)

-[X] with a minimum age of (8), maximum age of (15), and no physical impediments.

-[X] Hire some people to design a practical uniform… [Free]

-[X] Important considerations include...

-[X] Freedom of movement and sight

-[X] Protection of vital locations.

-[X] Adaptability of load out.

-[X] Person can put it on quickly

-[X] Durability

-[X] Comfort

-[X] Vital (determined by Tanya) enchantments if possible

-[X] Do air mage unit tasks… [2 AP]

-[X] Produce a set of basic mechanimagical devices to begin training subordinates (note, same as personal enchanting option. 3 sets currently available).

-[X] Basic Aerial mage training for a class of new recruits (requires mechanimagical devices, up to 8 recruits, 12 if Aisha is assisting).

[/Spoiler]

* * *

 _1/1/686 - 4/1/687 of the Imperial Calendar (Age 14-15 years)._

Over the last fifteen months, you'd hurried to get your first company of Aerial Mages assembled. You had taken Mama Lucia's deal, and she'd managed the recruit selection and fronted the budget to establish your force.

While Sasha was training her healing magic and preparing a combat medic course under Tullius' supervision, you and Aisha ran basic recruit training. Honestly, Aisha ran most of it; you were pretty busy finishing all of the casting devices and flight boots needed to outfit the unit.

Soon enough, your new recruits, ranging in age from ten to fifteen years old, finished their basic intake training.

You gave an adequate speech to mark the occasion…

"Salute!" Aisha barked out as you entered the room. You ascended the stage in the ringing silence that followed the right foot stomp, right hand to left should salute from the gathered troop.

"Stand at ease," you ordered, looking out at them. "Today, recruits, you are no longer maggots. Today, you become warriors. Look to your left and right. From now until the day you die, wherever you go and whatever you do, these men and women are your family. I trust you to keep that in mind, and for your actions to honor your brothers and sisters in arms."

You could see the pride on their little faces, the satisfaction. You were, of course, lying. You had yet to have your troops take their Oaths; until then, they were useless meat. Basic training had been a few months of hell to break them down and mold them back into a cohesive, obedient, loyal machine. This talk of family was a false promise, lure to force them forwards.

"Now, you stand at a crossroads. The training from here on out is far more difficult, more challenging. You passed basic training, and are to be commended for that. But what comes next is what _really_ separates the wheat from the chaff. It will test you mentally, physically, and spiritually. But as you learned in basic, the strongest steel is forged in the hottest crucible. And make no mistake; if you choose to go on, to take the oaths, you _will_ become the strongest steel. _I_ will ensure it.

"As for those who choose to give up and quit at this juncture, you will have your freedom and I will ensure you find stable employment in some trade. Weaving, pottery, something like that," you said dismissively.

"So, make your choice. Those who wish to stay, to travel the hard road ahead, to learn magic and become one of my Storm-Hawks, remain in ranks. Those who wish to leave, abandoning this journey, step forward."

This was, of course, drastically unfair. By having them have to volunteer to quit, in front of all their peers, having come so far, you ensured that they'd stay. But after staying, and becoming oathsworn, they'd be stuck. The Japanese navy had used similar tactics in World War Two to get "volunteers" for kamikaze missions. You'd never misuse your men in such a way, but were happy to crib from any successful tactic.

Your little chicks didn't surprise you. Not one broke ranks.

After they took the Oaths, the _real_ training started. Over the following year, you ran them through standard mechanimagic training, aerial mechanimagic school and aerial combat school. One of the recruits, Alus Gerlind, shone out as being more powerful magically and more capable in general. He was made the sergeant of the third squad. Aisha took the first, and Sasha the second.

The two weakest recruits, the only two in the company who were merely average mages, formed a reserve and got extra training as medics. Longer term, they'd stay behind in the staging area looking after the wounded, protecting the baggage and liaising with command. They just weren't as fast as the rest of the unit.

While you and Aisha whipped them into combat shape, Sasha helped but mostly focused on running training in basic first aid during less active periods. From that, she selected one member of each squad for further training as a medic.

Overall, the results were impressive. Though not equal to your 203rd, a veteran battalion which you had hand selected and then put through hell to select on the cream, your Storm-Hawks were at least the match for a regular Imperial Aerial Mage Company from the beginning of the War, or a freshly formed one which had gone through your academy post war. In other words, your child soldiers were worthy of the title 'soldier'.

And with you leading them, well… you expected great things from your troops. Already they could shred any equivalent force within the Saderan Empire.

Now, if only you had radios. As it stood, you were forced to use visual signals. It worked, and was fine so long as you deployed in company strength, or even as a single battalion sized force, but eventually you wanted to be able to give more complicated orders or use more sophisticated formations.

Eventually though, all good things came to an end. And as much as you'd have liked to have more time for training, looking down at this note from your mother, it seemed as if events were once more in motion.

 _Dear Tanya,_

 _My cousin, Marius Julius Longinus, has written to me requesting the repayment of the favor of loaning the family guard for our trip North. He is the eldest son of our Paterfamilias's heir, and has recently come of age. As such, he will be joining the upcoming campaign at the Great Gate as a Cohort Prefect in command of a cohort raised by our family._

 _Apparently Marius holds quite the martial ambition; he has been given a full Equitata Regiment to command. I'm told it includes a century of household guards, six of legion-standard infantry, and three centuries of archers. For cavalry, he has two turmae of light javelin skirmishers, three of light lancers, two turmae of mounted men-at-arms, and a turme of knights doubling as his bodyguard. However, he lacks a significant magical or aerial contingent._

 _Although he would_ _prefer_ _that you and your company join the campaign under his command, that isn't necessary. All you_ _need_ _do to pay back the favor is to send a squad of your mages to serve under his command, or to independently join the campaign with your whole company and bring honor to the Longinus name._

 _That said, if you_ _do_ _join the campaign in full force under his command, you will doubtless elevate his standing significantly, and he should be suitably grateful in the future. His prospects within the family are strong, and he is favored by his grandfather not just for the order of his birth, but for his intelligence and strength at arms._

 _He would not be a poor match for you, come to think of it, though your position and power afford you the luxury of choice in that matter._

 _Please make your decision, and send either yourself or your mages to meet with his contingent at the large wheat farm five miles east of Italica within the fortnight._

 _I remain your loving mother,_

 _Lucia Octavia Longina._

Well. No way in _hell_ were you marrying a man, _ever_. But this brings the whole Gate operation back front and center. You're sure that Being X will use it to fuck with you. Interdimensional gates check off basically _every_ fantasy disaster scenario possible.

The only questions are, do you want to be there to mitigate the situation? Or far enough to try and run if necessary? And do you feel comfortable sending your troops in without you?

Decisions, decisions.


	10. Situation Normal

**Post 10: Situation Normal**

* * *

[Spoiler= "Winning Vote"]

[x]Part One: Joining the Expedition.  
-[x] Tanya will:  
-[x] Join the campaign and…  
-[x] Operate as an independent mage attached to army HQ (+2 favor with cousin)

-[x] Squad 1 (Aisha + 3 Rank 11s) will:  
-[x] Join the campaign and…  
-[x] Be under Tanya's direct command.

-[x] Squad 2 (Sasha + 3 Rank 11s) will:  
-[x] Join the campaign and…  
-[x] Be under Tanya's direct command.

-[x] Squad 3 (Alus + 3 Rank 10s) will:  
-[x] Join the campaign and…  
-[x] Be under Tanya's direct command.

-[x] Reserves (2 Rank 9s) will:  
-[x] Join the campaign and…  
-[x] Be under Tanya's direct command.

[x] Part Two: What's through the Gate?  
-[x] Canon: Modern Japan. (Normal)

[/Spoiler]

* * *

 _4/1/687 - 5/10/687 of the Imperial Calendar (Age 15 years)._

Meeting Marius was an unexpected pleasure. You were all prepared for him to be a spoiled brat, coddled and soft. Instead you were met with an impressive young man who had obviously trained hard to improve both his body and mind. Witty, intelligent, hardworking, willing to listen to his more experienced subordinates; he reminded you of the better officers from your past life.

He was the living example of how nobility can work, how the lifelong expenditure of resources for top level training and inculcation of command ability can craft truly impressive specimens. He was ambitious, sure, but no one ever accomplishes _anything_ without ambition. Perhaps best of all, he was _very_ favorably inclined towards you, but not in a creepy way.

Unfortunately, his command was less impressive, stacked with fellow young sons of nobility and people of political rather than military talent. His XO, a career "soldier" was the sort of toadying political officer you despised, though the man knew well enough to toady up to you. He had filled the command ranks of the infantry with political appointees, few of whom could do something so basic as keeping up with the march even when they themselves were _mounted on horses_. Thankfully the infantry themselves were professional, but bad leadership is like a cancer; it grows to twist everything it's attached to.

The cavalry at least were competently led. Those officers who went into it tended to have much more of a martial background from their family, and were to a man more competent and better trained. The quality of the cavalry was merely average, but since cavalry is an "elite" branch, an average cavalryman tends to stack up against a professional footman.

Unfortunately for Marius, he did not manage to get any mages together to support his formation.

After a few days march, you joined up with the greater army. Four regular legions had gathered along with three times as many auxiliary and mercenaries for a total force of just under ninety thousand.

The top commander or Legate Pro Praetor, Quintus Julius, was a competent man. Unfortunately, he had recently been appointed to lead his legion, the Ninth, when the Emperor had seen how unacceptably pathetic that force had become. It was a total clusterfuck. Parade troop training priorities, patronage, corruption, and political infighting wracked the officers, while the men had grown wild, poorly disciplined and disobedient. Julius, a trusted companion of the Emperor in his younger years, was appointed to try and get it back into shape, and when the Emperor was looking for a general to command the invasion beyond the gate the man was tapped for leadership.

The other legions varied. The second highest ranking legate, Aresius Crassus was relatively young for his position, and renowned for his tactical and strategic acumen. His legion, the Twelfth, was full of crack veterans. The third legate was about as competent as Julius, a solid professional soldier, but his legion, the Seventeenth, was merely average. Meanwhile the fourth legate, commanding the Fourth, was below par, a relative of the governor-slash-duke of a province, but the legion itself was solid.

As for the additional elements, the monster and creature contingent was nothing impressive. Mostly filled with orcs and goblins, it was arrow fodder rather than the crushing hammer full of trolls, giants, and other top tier beasts that you'd prefer.

The aerial contingent was relatively full strength for the regular legions, unusual but a nice surprise. There were about three hundred and sixty of them all told, about evenly split between wyverns, griffins and pegasi.

The artillery contingent was lighter than you would have liked, nor was it particularly large. The lighter weapons would suffice against barbarian wooden hill forts and the like, but a properly dug in force with fixed artillery emplacements would be a hard nut to crack without you and the other mages.

Speaking of mages, that was fairly shameful. Your unit was a sizeable fraction of all the army's mages, and an even greater portion of the combat mage force; you were appointed as an Auxiliary Cohort Prefect. Unfortunately despite the low number of mages and the fact that your own company was the largest individually controlled unit, Julius' magical advisor was appointed to be the Mage Prefect. Fairly old and never the best mage, Marcus Pontius was nonetheless a genius when it came to organizing and commanding magical assets.

You're not sure if you were happy about that or not. Because of the paucity of magical resources, he spent much of his time micromanaging you with direct orders. It would have been much easier for you to disregard him if the orders didn't always make sense. Nor did he particularly approve of you specifically. Not because of your adorableness, but mostly because you were young, female, and had a bunch of child soldiers with you. It was nice of him to disapprove in the abstract, but annoying to have to deal with.

Legate Julius was taking the invasion seriously, and placed Crassus as commander of the van. You weren't sure if that was a good or bad thing; it might have been best for Crassus to take the rearguard in case you needed a senior commander to organize the retreat when Being X's surprise finally dropped. But Crassus and his men were certainly the best bet for an actual victory.

The attack organization was solid. A wave of the greenskins would be sent in first to trip any traps and break up defensive lines, followed by Crassus' legion to establish a beachhead. Areas for pre and post processing prisoners and captives were planned for, and thought given as to how to keep troops moving in and captives moving out. Given the width of the gate and average movement speed of a double-timing legion, it would take about ten minutes for each legion to cross, with that time doubling for when the captives would be coming out on the other side.

Following Crassus' legion, Julius and his command group (including you) would transit followed in turn by Julius' legion. Apparently it was an issue of personal honor; you thought it was an issue that would doubtless much up the orderly transit of troops after Julius' incompetent troops fucked up their march.

Following Julius' troops would come the 17th, then the bulk of the mercenaries. Assuming, of course, that conditions didn't change overmuch.

Then the rituals were complete, the Gate opened, the invasion begun.

[center]===============================[/center]

The first troops to go through the Gate were stunned. A ten story stone tower was tall to them, and suddenly they were surrounded by massive edifices of steel and glass and concrete. But the greenskins were too stupid to be impressed for long. Spotting crowds of defenseless civilians, they charged, their officers barely keeping them controlled enough to take captives and keep moving.

On their heels, Crassus' veteran Twelfth Legionnaires split up, marching down the streets, breaking into buildings and securing their beachhead. They were uneasy at the situation. The massive edifices, bright fabrics, expanses of glass, perfect roads, horseless metal carriages and soft citizens spoke to a rich district of a mighty city, likely served by a great many mages. But they did their duty.

The Japanese, tourists and visitors and inhabitants of Ginza, Tokyo, were in shock. Out of nowhere an army of rampaging historical reenactors had emerged. Most stayed still, possibly screaming, as they were taken captive by the barbarians.

The police were quick to organize to the emergency. Hundreds of patrol cars and thousands of police on foot were hastily ordered to the region. But until then, those few police on the scene were easily overwhelmed. They might carry pistols, but very few had ever used them. They were trained to first fire a warning shot, then to shoot to wound. Against organized soldiers used to bloody melee, used to taking casualties, it was far too little. And then their ammunition ran out, and a bleak situation became even bleaker.

As the number of captives clubbed down with spear buts and the flats of blades climbed into the thousands, the Saderan troops began herding them back to be tied and eventually chivied back through the gate. The Twelfth had pushed more than half their men through with the rest streaming through in fine speed, and the two and a half thousand infantry and cavalry easily outnumbered the few defenders.

But the Tokyo police were rallying. Their twelve hundred patrol cars were sent in fully loaded with police and extra ammunition. Firing lines were established of police standing shoulder to shoulder, ready to repel any charge by the antiquely equipped attackers. Safe zones allowed the civilians to flee, time for their escape bought by riot squads which engaged wooden shields and spears and swords with their plastic riot shields and batons.

Unremarked in the chaos of the time, a young JGSDF officer heroically rescued civilians and brought them to safety with one of the largest police groups to organize. Near the Imperial Palace, formed around a core of anti-terror special police equipped with flash-bangs and submachine guns, this group guarded one of Japan's greatest monuments and a massive collection of tourists.

You transited through the Gate with the rest of the general's bodyguard group and were immediately taken aback. You _recognized_ this. Modern day Japan, a bit more advanced than what you knew but not much.

Oh, fuck. Oh, that absolute fucking goddamned evil, twisted, _fuck_! That bastard X! What the hell were you and your men supposed to do against a modern military? What would happen when the _Americans_ got involved?

In the entire _army_ there were only perhaps twenty individuals that _might_ be able to challenge a good armored personnel carrier; as for those capable of taking on a tank from the front, that's a narrow list which included _only_ you. Your Storm-Hawks weren't ready to take on _Apache gunships_ , for god's sake!

You were still stunned as Legate Julius was presented with first captives, a group of beautiful young Japanese women who had been out shopping. As Crassus reported to Julius, you were hardly paying attention, trying to think of how to formulate your request to scout, your argument warning them of danger. You heard a gap in their conversation.

"Sir, permission to scout the enemy?" you asked. Crassus and Julius looked at you fondly.

"What, you heard about how easily these foes fall, and wanted some loot for yourself, eh Tanya?" Julius teased in his somewhat grandfatherly manner before looking at Pontius who shook his head. "But no, I think it's more useful to keep you in reserve in case we meet any strong mages or other threats emerge."

"Sir, that's not it at all!" you protested. "I just –"

"Prefect Longina!" Pontius snapped. "Come over here."

"Yes sir!" you replied, grimacing. These damned primitives were going to get you all fucked up the ass when the Japanese and American air support and armor arrived.

"Prefect, you do not interrupt a report from a legate to the commanding general," he snarled quietly. "Get your shit together, and if your superiors tell you to wait, you wait! Understood?"

"Yes, sir," you answered.

"Good."

Well, at least you had the chance to hear all the reports as they came in, you thought. Over the next five minutes more detachments came back surrounding massive bands of newly captured Japanese and tourists destined for slavery if they weren't recaptured by your enemies.

As the initial wave of Japanese responders met with the growing swell of Imperial legionnaires, more and more police were killed by volleys of heavy arrows and javelins. Gaps opened up in the police lines, and groups were overwhelmed and captured or killed.

The Japanese Imperial Palace was holding strong. It was not really a priority target for attack save for the fact that there were defenders there, and a fight draws soldiers like flies to honey. But it was a priority position for defense, with both walls and a core of trained fighters. And so it held, and a young Japanese officer began coordinating with the reinforcements incoming from the bases at Zama and Yokota.

Soon enough reports came back to the Imperial command about the widespread use of guns, which the legionnaires believed to be a sort of magic. Again you requested permission to scout, and this time it was given. You rocketed into the air, trailed by your company of mages.

From what you could tell, the Empire was doing _too_ well. It would be difficult to convince them to retreat, and the quick-moving Japanese response would find it all too easy to surround the forward Imperial elements, inviting a defeat in detail with no possibility of retreat. You returned back to the command post.

"Sir, reporting!" you said. "Enemy forces have widely deployed magical devices or mages across all fronts. I advise that we pull back to a more defensive posture. We can bring in archers to attack from range while establishing defenses in case of a counter-attack and preparing for a retreat if necessary." You doubted they'd listen, but you had to try.

"I had heard that you exhibited much greater courage in the North, Prefect Longina," Crassus said disapprovingly.

"Sir, my own company are more than a match for these locals. But there are _fifteen_ of us. Even if we're each worth a hundred of the enemy, I estimate we're _already_ facing that many. And that's just from what the enemy had on hand. What happens when their army arrives?" you asked rhetorically.

"I don't believe that to be the case. Look around; this must be a noble district, or perhaps the center of their mages. The enemy are likely their equivalent of the Emperor's guard, or the Sages. In which case it's far better to attack _now_ than to let them get organized, and then once we've broken through we can conquer to our glory," Crassus rejoined.

"I don't believe you're correct. I think these are the equivalent of their urban cohorts, city guardsmen."

"I believe that Crassus has the more convincing argument," Julius ruled. You grimaced.

"Very well, sir. In that case, may I have permission to proceed to the front and engage the enemy to relieve pressure from our men?" you requested.

"Granted. Good-" Your shield shuddered, then again and again.

*Bang! Bang! Bang!* you heard as the sniper rounds impacted. What was worse was that they were targeting _you_ rather than the generals.

"Snipers! Protectores, protect your legates!" you snapped as the officers were surrounded by men with massive shields. "Storm-Hawks, climb evasive!" you cried as more fire came in. Your shields could easily take it, but high powered armor penetrating rounds could kill lightly armored vehicles; your boys and girls were not well enough protected to be unconcerned. In a starburst of movement and visual decoys your company scattered, rocketing upwards.

You came to a stop about six thousand feet up, shivering and laughing at the rush of being shot at once more. Your spear came up, pointing at the side of a building some half-kilometer distant from the command post, where the fire originated from, and a lance of magical energy poured forth. It impacted the side of the building with a massive explosion, which was followed by the side of the building collapsing and smashing onto the ground. You sighed in pleasure, a wide and disturbing smile on your face.

"Storm-Hawks, this is our battlefield. Regardless of whether the opponents are mage or mundane, or the divines themselves, their fate was sealed the moment they thought to raise their hands against us. We will annihilate them without thought. Such is the mission I entrust to you," you said in a brief speech reminiscent to one you had given in your previous life. You could see your troops steadying, supported by your absolute conviction and power.

Looking around, you saw a concentration of enemy combatants, their greys and blues dark forming a dark line against the grass in front of the Japanese Imperial palace. Scattered corpses totaling at least a century of Legionnaires showed how effective their defense had been. You saw a turmae of cavalry preparing to charge them around a building's corner, two centuries of infantry in testudo formation prepared to follow. They even had a quartet of ogres armed with massive mauls and axes; doubtless they were hoping to break the defenders and crack open the palace.

A worthy goal. You grinned, and pointed your spear at the enemy's formation.

"Reserves, try and keep the legates alive. Focus on your shields. Go!" you ordered, and they went. A large part of it was the fact they were simply less powerful, and would slow down your unit. Speed is life to an aerial mage.

Then you continued with your attack plan.

"Company, form column by squad! We will approach the flank and strafe the enemy formation. Pass at one hundred feet, and remember to keep your shields up. Follow me!"

And with that, you swept out, curving to come in at the defenders' flank to maximize effectiveness. You passed over the line of defenders at effectively point blank range, a flurry of your explosive spells detonating like grenades amongst them. Other explosive spells and rapidly fired mana bolts followed from your trailing troops. Using a vision spell to look back over your shoulder, you saw that your company had absolutely shredded the defenders. A few were injured; the vast majority were dead.

As the company swept up, leaving the cover of the lower-lying buildings, you spotted a sight that made you pale. A pair of fighters. You had come up on their flank, and they weren't in a position to hit you or you them until after they turned about.

You saw as they pulled tight, high-g turns, coming about towards your group of mages. It looked like they were armed with sidewinders and hadn't managed a missile lock on your merely human heat sources, and so had chosen to go with a gun-run.

You rapidly pulled up spells you'd barely practiced and had last _really_ used a lifetime ago, trying to get a lock on the jets at a long enough range to be effective. You didn't manage it, their maneuvers enough to dodge the rounds you fired and your homing too weak against their evasions.

"Evasive scatter!" you screamed to your troops who burst in all directions, dozens of visual decoys making targeting you even harder. It proved sufficient against the jets, and though a pair of decoys were hit none of your troops were injured. As the jets passed by a flurry of fire came from your Storm-Hawks, hitting one of the enemy's wings. Damaged but not downed the jet retreated from the combat zone while his wing-man turned off to engage wyverns in a different zone of the battlefield.

You took a moment to appreciate your luck and survival, then signaled your soldiers to reformed. After all, you had a battle to win.

[center]===============================[/center]

On the ground, a groaning Japanese man in his early thirties picked himself up off the ground. He had been lucky. He was hit by one of the first explosions, but any shrapnel was caught by his neighbor and he was merely thrown a few meters away. Temporarily stunned, he managed to avoid being a target from any of the other attackers.

"What the fuck," second lieutenant Yoji Itami complained while picking up a submachine gun from an anti-terrorism task force member who wouldn't be needing it again, slung it over his shoulder and began filling his pockets and waistband with magazines from the man's tactical vest.

"Genre-crossing bastards," he continued. "First legionnaires and monsters, and now fucking magical girls and boys? How is that even fair?" He looked around, and saw a few other lucky survivors start to stagger to their feet or crawl back to their positions.

Honestly, when this whole thing started he thought he was dreaming. Although a member of the JGSDF, he was a massive otaku. The same that drove him to join the army drove his obsession; boredom, a search for fulfilment.

Out of college, wanted to be fulfilled. So he got married. Then he realized that he was really looking for an interesting life, a bit of excitement and meaning. And so he joined the JGSDF, but that was boring. Too easy, too simple, not engaging enough. He thought, _maybe if I do something more extreme, then I'll be interested?_

And so he wheedled and poked and blackmailed his superior to suggest him for Ranger training. But even that wasn't really enough. Anime and manga didn't really _fill_ the hole, but they made him forget it for a while.

As an otaku, a popular theme in light novels and the like is modern versus fantasy. As a member of the military, he couldn't help but fantasize about it a bit. Just a bit. Only enough that it was a recurring dream he had once a month or so. But more than enough that when it actually happened he thought he might have been asleep. Even when he _knew_ he wasn't, knew that the bodies were real, the threats were real, he felt like he _should_ have been dreaming.

But standing them, submachine gun in hand, amongst the corpses and injured, he knew he wasn't. Which was why he knew how fucked he was as the first cavalrymen rounded the building less than a hundred meters away.

"Fuck," he muttered. Then, louder, "Aim for the horses! Aim for the fucking horses! On my command!" he screamed at the other survivors. He picked up another submachine gun.

Dual wielding was a fucking joke. Oh, a lot of soldiers would try it sometime during training if their officers weren't paying enough attention. As something of a shameless slacker who didn't care about his reputation and an officer himself, Itami had done so. But when the targets were a few dozen meters away, and filled the street shoulder to shoulder, and between horse and rider represented a few meters of height for the target, well. Then the joke became a little more _biting_.

The horses began to move forwards. At forty meters, he gave the command.

"Fire!"

The resulting sound and weight of fire was pathetic compared to what they had managed before. Still, firing two weapons on full automatic was more than enough to get his blood pumping. He swept across the formation and back before the guns ceased firing, locked open with no more bullets to feed. He dropped the left hand gun to the sound of screaming horses and men; the assault had crashed into their bullets and been thrown back.

Releasing the magazine and inserting another before letting the bolt shoot forward and fill the chamber with another round, he brought the submachine gun up to his shoulder and aimed down the sights. The cavalry were no longer a threat and had been turned into a screaming, flailing mess of dead and injured and panicked horses and men. But over that mess he could see rank after rank of armored infantry advancing.

He lined the sights up with the face of a soldier in slightly nicer armor with a different helmet, and fired. The enemy dropped. He switched target, and fired. And fired. And fired.

He switched magazines when he needed to. Eventually the surviving enemies broke and ran. He had run out of proper targets, ones that were a threat, and so he switched to shooting the injured horses whose screams offended his ears, the enemy that had been merely knocked over who were foolish enough to rise and make targets of themselves again.

And then he ran out of threats entirely. He and that rag-tag band of defenders, that group that just didn't know to stop when they should have been dead, had done it. They'd held.

"Sir, what's so funny?" a new reinforcement asked. Itami didn't know what the man was talking about until the man pointed at Itami's face. Itami brought one shaking hand up to feel his face. It bore a massive, disturbing smile.

He only realized it after, but as he fought at the edge of death, he had never felt so alive.

[center]===============================[/center]

For a few minutes, you flitted about the battlefield like a demonic hummingbird, spreading death and destruction in your wake. The Imperial attack had bogged down. Disorganization, the need to clear huge buildings, soldiers grabbing loot, the massive number of captives to process and the resistance of the Japanese officers had broken up the assault. Crassus' men were good enough to keep going despite all that, but Julius' _weren't_ , and without sufficient support the advance faltered.

Luckily for your Imperials, the Japanese weren't faring any better. Contrary orders from a command which was rapidly losing control of the mounting crisis, patrol cars leaving for the front without sufficient loads of officers or bullets, traffic jams and limited reinforcements meant that the police simply couldn't hold. Not in the face of your aerial assaults and bombing runs. Here and there key units holding the perimeter broke and retreated, or were killed or captured. The solid ring of police limiting the Imperials became a sieve, and civilians too stupid to keep running after they crossed into "safety" paid the price.

The one exception proved to be that damned palace. Somehow the _extremely_ few survivors of your initial attack had rallied and inflicted enough casualties on the attacking force that the police could keep their position intact until reinforcement arrived. New Imperial attackers arrived only to be cut down by automatic fire.

You were just preparing to go back and deal with them once and for all when you heard it. The *whoop, whoop, whoop* sound of helicopters, the screaming chainsaw sound of miniguns, the jackhammers of machineguns and autocannon, the *whoosh-boom!* of rockets. Enemy reinforcements had arrived, and they'd brought the heavy bruisers into this dustup. It was time to GTFO.

You were lucky enough that the helicopters didn't come up on your ass. They were flying low, keeping at or below roof level, and so you hadn't spotted them until after they arrived and started chewing up the Imperial army.

"Rally up! Squads, overlap shields and fall back to the Gate!" Hopefully by keeping to a few tight formations the shields would be strong enough to take a few seconds of machinegun fire if needed. You launched the retreat-signal flares up into the sky which denoted an overwhelming enemy and would hopefully keep the Imperial losses lower than they otherwise might be.

You led the way, keeping low and going slow enough to scout lest you lead your small company into a formation of helicopters' guns.

The initial helicopter attack had been flawless and crushing. Imperial infantry had been cut to pieces and were routing. Transport Black-Hawks had landed or allowed the infantry they were carrying to rope down. Gunships had reaped a brutal accounting, and it was obvious that observers were in contact with naval ships as their cannon rained down artillery shells near the Gate.

The only saving grace was that the dismounted infantry were making their way in towards the Gate; it seemed as if the enemy commander hadn't wanted to cut off all retreat and force the Empire to fight like cornered rats. Still, the advance was far too fast and you had to hurry lest you be cut off or ambushed.

A few blocks away from the intersection where the Gate was, it finally happened. A convoy of helicopters came up over the buildings and down right behind your formation.

"Squatter by squad, fall back and rally on the other side of the Gate!" you ordered, then turned to face the helicopters. You knew _you_ were good enough to face helicopters, especially if they hadn't prepared to engage a master aerial mage as opposed to other helicopters or ground targets.

You made eye contact with the lead pilot, pointing your spear at the gunship. As the cannon tracked upwards, you fired an explosive spell into the cockpit. The helicopter crumpled and as it began to fall you rocketed forwards and upwards. Looping in the air so that you were upside down, you extended a blade projection and ran it across the next helicopter's blades before bringing the spear to point forwards towards the third helicopter in line and putting a split armor-penetrating mana bolt through the pilot and copilot's skulls. The third helicopter crashed sideways into a building as an explosive spell finished the fourth.

"Hahahahaha!" you laughed, madly. "Are you watching, Being X! Are you entertained yet!" you screamed to the heavens before zooming off. There were more helicopters to kill, after all, and you wanted your men to retreat to safety.

Ten minutes and nearly twenty helicopters later, and it was time to _leave_. They were actively hunting you at this point, and the surviving Imperials were mostly through the Gate. You'd already had to duck patrolling jets a few times. Worse, the helicopters might decide to try and seize the Gate, trapping you. Worst of all, your mana was running low.

In the end, it turned out to be a bit of a race between the troops trying to block the Gate and you, but you were faster. They took a few potshots, launched some rockets, but between your speed, cornering and visual decoys you got through unscathed.

Coming through the Gate, you entered a scene of chaos. Crassus had survived, as had Julius, but their commands were savaged, and there were hundreds of injured soldiers scattered about the place. Senior officers were having screaming matches, while others were trying to build some organization, get troops formed up around the gate,

Looking around for your troops you found them. A bit more scuffed up than you'd last seen them, sitting on ammunition cans marked _5.56_ or _9mm Ammunition, 1200 rounds_ and one crate marked _Grenades, M67, 40 count_ that made you pale. In the center of their formation were two longer crates, likely used to store rifles or other guns, and on top of that was a machinegun. Judging from the arm it was mounted on, one of your bloodthirsty little magpies had likely cut it off the helicopter before absconding with the thing.

You hurried over as you saw them poking the thing.

"Attention!" you shouted, and they all snapped to their feet.

"What's the first rule with strange artifacts?" you asked menacingly. Aisha, who certainly knew better and was in command during your absence paled.

"Don't touch them, Milady!" she shouted out.

"Good. So _why the fuck are you poking it!_ " you shouted.

""No excuse, Milady!"" they replied in a ragged chorus.

"Alright. I'll excuse it _just this once_ as a post-combat mistake. Don't do it again," you glowered. "As it stands, that box there is full of metal apples which explode, and that steel rod you were poking can throw bits of metal faster than the speed of sound. I want you to establish a guard around this material until I can examine it. That said, well done. You all made it back alive, and you secured potentially critical artifacts in the process." You let them preen for a bit then continued. "Aisha, you're in charge until I get back."

"Yes, Milady," she called out as you turned on your heel and went to go make sense of the chaos. You pulled aside a staff officer, one of the adjutants who was clever enough to pay attention to what was going on and wise enough to fear you despite your appearance..

"Protectore Sabinus, what's been going on?" you asked.

"Ah, Prefect Longina," he said, saluting. "It's um, well a disaster. The enemy's magical devices were so strong. We lost far too many men. Initial estimates are that the Ninth has lost four out of five men beyond the gate; at least a quarter of those that remain are moderately injured or worse. The Twelfth fared better. At least two in three men survived. From what I can tell, we have you to thank for that; there have been numerous accounts of you and your retainers destroying the flying wagons or pushing back the enemy on the ground long enough to allow a retreat."

"So what, that's five and half thousand dead or captured and another twelve hundred or so injured?" you estimated with a grimace.

"That's right, Prefect."

"And how many slaves did a Legion of Empire's finest buy?" you asked as he winced.

"About five thousand."

"Fuck. Well, that's done with at least. What are we doing to prepare?" You could tell from the expression on his face the news was anything but good. "No. Don't tell me. The officers who didn't see the enemy don't believe it. They want to attack through the Gate." You could from the way he flinched that you were right. At least the Japanese, or rather the American Helicopter Battalion, didn't push _through_ the Gate while this clusterfuck was ongoing.

The way you see it, there are five priorities.

First, seeing that the captives aren't mistreated, because there is no surer way of pissing off a modern nation than to enslave and rape its citizens in mass.

Second, attempting to open diplomatic negotiations, though that may be hard without speaking Japanese. Unless you can find a way to hide the source of your knowledge? You could probably take a captive, put your hand on their head, knock them out with a bit of a lightshow before using medimagic to knock yourself out, then wake up "having learnt" Japanese. It might leave Pontius a bit suspicious, but the common folk would definitely buy it and the mages would have nothing more than suspicions. On the other hand, a protracted negotiation with a _lack_ of language might be just the thing to drag the situation out and give you longer before an invasion. Assuming, of course, that the Japanese were ok with that.

Third, the Gate needed to be fortified. And against tanks. That would take a bit of doing; thankfully you'd at least seen armored warfare back in your previous life, and knew what anti-tank ditches should look like.

Fourth, you need as many mages at the Gate as possible _yesterday_. They're the only thing the Empire has that stands a chance against modern armor.

Fifth, and less important than the others, you need to take inventory of just what it is that your kids managed to loot, and figure out what to do with it. Guns _aren't_ casting focuses, but they would make it far, far easier to create guns as casting focuses. Basically you'd have to carve a few runes on the barrel and replace the stock, parts of the body and barrel shroud with enchanted wood and silver inlays.

You figure that you can oversee your first priority, give detailed instructions for the second, some advice for the third, and help select who takes care of the fourth. As a note, your political capital is limited, as is the possible reactions to your advice.


	11. Bad Thinking

**Post 11: Bad Thinking**

* * *

[Spoiler= "Winning Vote"]

[X]Plan What's Geneva?

-[X] Priorities:

-[X] First Priority:

-[X] Fortifications

-[X] Second Priority:

-[X] Loot

-[X] Third Priority:

-[X] Captives

-[X] Forth Priority:

-[X] Mages

-[X] Captives action:

-[X] Have Cousin Marius and his regiment guard them (Priority 3 – high probability, very low chance serious mistreatment but likely to be forced to work.)

-[X] (Optional Extra) Assign Aisha to help guard captives. She has Centurion rank, and can warn Tribunes and Prefects that you will be lethally displeased if the captives are mistreated.

-[X] Negotiations action (select as many non-conflicting options as desired):

-[X] Try and have negotiations at all, if they come through the gate before the next sally.

-[X] (Optional Extra) Have Alus Gerlind and his squad accompany diplomat and provide protection. Reduces chance of initial outreach hostility resulting in casualties.

-[X] Fortifications action (select non-conflicting options as desired. Priority 4, only 1 option. Priority 3, limited to 2 options. Priority 2, can select up to four options. Priority 1, unlimited.)

-[X] anti-tank ditches.

-[X] incendiaries.

-[X] defenses likely to be effective against guns.

-[X] interconnected infantry trenches to try and force CQC.

-[X] positioning and optimized fields of fire for artillery and archers.

-[X] Barricades or choke-points around the gate.

-[X] See if you can build scaffolding or a tunnel over the gate, so you can fire down on anything that comes through.

-[X] Mages action.

-[X] Good luck! (priority 4)

-[X] (Optional Extra) Send Sasha and her squad to carry message and talk to her teacher. Increases odds of success, decreases time to reinforcements.

-[X] Loot action.

-[X] Figure out what rifle is available, write up plans, send a dozen guns and plans to mom (priority 2, uses reserves)

-[X] If available, issue out hand grenades and careful instructions on their use to trustworthy and reliable centurions. Err on the side of caution.

-[X] If possible, demonstrate the effects of an infantry rifle to the local commanders. Emphasize that these are standard-issue, as common as a Legionnaire's sword, and briefly extrapolate on what that might mean for field engagements. [/Spoiler]

* * *

You were lucky. The Japanese and their American allies didn't choose to pursue immediately. In the command meeting, you pushed hard for authority over the fortification design. The traditional, Romanesque fort would be totally ineffective in this instance; bullets would penetrate straight through the wooden stakes, let alone heavier machine guns, autocannon and tank shells.

Unfortunately, you were challenged for this command by Lucius Avitus, Legate of the Fourth. Apparently he considered himself something of an expert. Having been _personally_ responsible for the attack not being a total failure, you thought you had a good chance of getting the job despite your lacking political status or rank.

You thought wrong. Your unnatural adorableness worked against you in the most wicked of ways. Not even reminding the general how you had personally saved his life, or how Avitus _hadn't even seen the enemy_ was sufficient to sway him. Not only could you not command your defenses, since you had "interesting ideas" and a "passion" for the subject you were assigned to work as Avitus' assistant.

You're not sure if you're being paranoid, but you suspect that Being X made you adorable just for this very moment.

Avitus was insufferable, a true incompetent. He was the sort of political officer that was likely to die in some sort of tragic "mistake" back in your previous lifetime; competent enough to get high command, incompetent and arrogant enough to fuck up when it's most important and get a lot of people killed.

Your plans were in tatters; your hastily thought of methods to help reduce your disadvantage, to slow the enemy advance enough that you could kill enough armor to turn it back – those were rejected wholesale.

Instead of going with a modified modern design aimed at slowing the enemy advance and allowing your troops to close to hand-to-hand, Avitus went with an inward-facing wooden palisade. It looked somewhat like an inverted star-fort, leaving a bare area near the Gate as a killing ground. To give credit where it was due, the design was _good_. It had nice lines of fire for archers and artillery, and if there were a parity of weapons and training it might even have worked.

But there wasn't that parity, and the design lacked every feature that might help.

No anti-tank ditches; it could provide cover for the enemy's infantry.

No defensive earthworks likely to give true protection from gun and cannon; Saderans don't dig into the ground but stand tall behind their walls.

No barricades or choke points around the gate; they might interfere with the killing ground.

No incendiary traps; the mode of deploying incendiary material advised by Tacitus' manual is by artillery.

No structure immediately surrounding the Gate; it might be hit by friendly artillery, or prevent the enemy from coming through to their rightful deaths.

The _only_ suggestion the man took was to have a trench for infantry to get into CQC. Except instead of an easily dug trench some twenty or forty meters long, the moron decided on a sapper's tunnel into the center of the killing ground. The damned thing started from over a hundred meters away, behind your lines, and wasn't even halfway done by the time the Japanese came through for some vengeance.

Honestly, you were so pissed off that you started off to assassinate the man, only to be warned off by your oaths. Incompetence, it seemed, was not sufficient cause for execution.

The only saving grace was that you were able to choose Marius' billeting locations. You picked a slight rise behind the Gate with a good view of the "killing ground" for his supposed headquarters, then promptly occupied it yourself. He was wise enough to follow your instructions for digging in, and his men quickly fortified the place well enough that it could at least resist modern assault.

Your company would be able to operate on the ground with sufficient cover and prepared firing positions to improve your odds of survival, even if no one else had those same advantages.

Other than that though, you convinced him and some other auxiliary commanders, friends of his, to prepare to retreat if needed. There was a semi-covered path, a depression that was likely an old stream or such, that led through some hills near the Coan forest and Dumas mountains. Brush was cut and dried for covering smoke, and cached supplies of food and water located along the way.

The bulk of his forces were further back, alongside the path of possible retreat. You had managed to convince Julius to put the captives under his guard, and then impressed upon Marius the importance of the prisoners being well treated. To ensure their safety from other Imperial military members, Marius established a fairly typical palisade with ditches, a legion camp in miniature.

You also assigned Aisha and her squad to help guard the captives. She had Auxiliary Centurion rank for the campaign, and could warn Tribunes and Prefects that you would be lethally displeased if captives were mistreated while just straight up ordering lower ranks not to do so.

The food supply wasn't that good for the captives, at least compared to the modern plenty they were used to, and they might have been hit rather more frequently than they'd ever been in their lives, but they weren't treated substantially differently from common soldiers. In other words, well within the laws of war.

As for anything serious or criminal, as far as you were aware _no_ liberties were taken with the captives. At all. Marius managed to secure them quickly enough that they were all held together rather than being claimed by individual officers. Your claim that they might be hidden mages was accepted by Julius, and any that _had_ been claimed temporarily confiscated. Beyond that, even the shittiest of the politically connected narrow-band tribunes were busy enough preparing for a counter-attack that they didn't have time for liberties with the captives.

The captives themselves were remarkably well behaved, models of modern Japanese civility. Beyond that, they were fascinated with Aisha and your magical girls and boys. It was something to bear in mind that might help you in the future. Aisha, meanwhile, demonstrated an impressive ability to learn and teach languages, and rapidly had her squad speaking an understandable if pidgin form of Japanese.

Unfortunately, you were too busy with the fortifications to spend much time cultivating the captives.

What spare time you had was taken up by inventorying the loot your company had captured. Altogether, you had twenty M4 carbines along with forty-eight hundred rounds of 5.56 ammo for them. You also had forty M9 pistols, also with forty-eight hundred rounds of nine-millimeter. There was a single M240 machinegun which you took the time to take out of the aircraft configuration, with a single box containing two-hundred eighty rounds of ammunition. Lastly, you had a box of forty hand grenades.

With regards to your loot, you focused on drawing plans to modify the carbines to be magical guns. It was a possible modification, but fairly complicated to produce. When you sent the plans to Mother, she only managed one gun every other day, though you suspected that with more practice she'd average about one a day.

The modification itself, however, was nearly perfect, a state of the art mechanimagical combat device. Overall you expected significant improvement to combat abilities with an increased range, rate of fire, accuracy. The bullets would at least improve the damage output of your mages as well, though your own magic was beyond that level.

Unfortunately, though you now had two of these weapons thanks to your mother's efforts, you were the only one who knew how to shoot.

The grenades were distributed to a group of staff-slingers, handpicked from an auxiliary cohort. They practiced how to arm and throw them, and represented a fair bit of effect against infantry. You deployed them in penny packets to turn back infantry, though you doubted the Japanese would be foolish enough to use them.

You tried to organize a demonstration of an infantry rifle to the local commanders, but the idiots didn't even show up. A command staff meeting over-ran, and they all claimed to be too busy, openly dismissing you.

Morons. One even said that he didn't want to _listen_ to such a pretty girl, and had better uses for your mouth. You broke his jaw, and told him that _that_ was a better use for _his_ mouth.

In the desire for magical reinforcements, Julius sent Pontius off to Rondel to request assistance. You sent Sasha and her squad to carry him. They went via Italica, picking up Tullius en route to lend greater weight to their request. Luckily Rondel had a strong response, partially due to Pontius and Tullius' arguments.

Twenty sages along with about forty students left to provide mostly non-combat or strategic level support, while forty Rondelian Mage-Knights and their squires accompanied them. They were expected to arrive after two weeks, though Pontius and Sasha's squad flew back ahead of the expedition.

Meanwhile Julius did attempt to make a peaceful overture to the Japanese. Unfortunately, he sent his envoy with an olive branch; while it was the symbol of peace _here_ , over on Earth it was just a confusing tree limb for people expecting a white flag. You weren't sure if the guards had itchy trigger fingers or thought the olive branch was a magical weapon, but they fired on the man.

Only the fact that Gerlind and his squad were there as protection saved him from the burst of gunfire, and they were forced to retreat. Still, the fact that no-one had died was a good sign for future negotiations, and it was now likelier that the Japanese would recognize the meaning of olive-branches in the future after their analysts had their say.

And then, a week after you had first gone through the Gate, the enemy attacked. It came in the middle of the night, though there was at least a half-moon and so things weren't as difficult as they might have been.

The first tanks came through as a pair, side by side, pouring out smoke and from what you learned afterwards rapidly lined their cannons up on artillery positions. Clearly the enemy had used a camera on a cable or some such to scout through the light-blocking Gate, and were ready for your defenses. You arrived in time to see another tank came through, this time accompanied by a SPAAG (self-propelled anti-aircraft gun) with a pair of autocannon.

Shit. You sure as hell weren't launching into the air with _that_ so close by.

"Storm-Hawks!" you called out. "Squad Aisha, keep the prisoners secure. Squad Sasha, Squad Gerlind, stay in cover and engage from the ground! Shoot and move; don't stay there waiting for return fire. Aim for their rear or the treads. If they're immobilized, find a new target! Get to it!" you shouted. Not the most motivating speech, but you didn't have time. Your reserves were with your mother; they'd be able to protect her and escort her to safety if the worst were to happen, at least.

"Yes, Milady!" you heard them raggedly chorus, zooming into trenches and aiming at the enemy.

The Imperial reaction was a fucking mess. A cavalry unit had sallied, only to be cut down by machineguns and retreat. It was orderly, but left a lot of dead. Archers had managed to injure a machine-gunner or two, which was something. The artillery was actually far and away the most useful; the mass of fires and smoke reduced vision, impeded night-vision goggles, and somewhat reduced accuracy.

Between that and the fact that the crews were excited and seeing combat for the first time, the tanks were less accurate than you had expected.

Aiming your gun, you recited a brief prayer. You hated it, but had never faced modern armor and wanted the boost.

"For what they are about to receive, may I be truly thankful," you muttered.

Then you fired and missed your first target in the smoke. _Damn_. Reacquiring, you fired again. This time it was a hit, the powerful explosive round killing a tank that was leaving the Gate. A moment later a massive secondary explosion rang out, likely ammunition cooking off, and sent the turret flying until it smashed into the side of one of the tanks that had left earlier. The treads along the side of the second tank seized, and it spun thirty degrees as one side suddenly came to a stop.

To your left and right a flurry of explosive spells flashed out from Sasha and Gerlind's squads. Sasha's unit managed to hit another tank's treads, immobilizing it, while Gerlind's hit but did no significant damage.

The Japanese tankers were cool under fire. They kept pushing more and more vehicles through, and had rammed the tank carcass blocking part of the Gate's exit. Their machineguns chewed through walls and reinforcing infantry as their cannon destroyed any artillery position not using indirect fire.

For all that though, their strategy _sucked_. Whichever officer came up with it should have been cashiered. Instead of this methodical push with a fairly defensive posture, gathering up as a massive armored fist, the Japanese should have been more aggressive. If they'd pushed their first armor platoon all the way through, crashed through the defensive wall, then you'd have been truly screwed. You'd have to either abandon those men and those tanks as targets, or pop up and get shredded by anti-air. For all that tanks seem like mobile fortresses, they should have been _used_ as cavalry. Hit fast, strike through, and allow the infantry to follow that up.

Instead, they were waffling about inside this space, likely waiting for full company or, even more idiotically, battalion strength before making their next move. You doubted that the US was in charge of the planning; that or they had sent their very lamest officers.

Still, you were thankful for their mistakes. You fired again and again, missing a tank and then hitting it's turret. Unfortunately, you only ringed it, failing to penetrate, and so upped the amount of power you were devoting to each spell. Sasha's squad had targeted and killed one of the SPAAGs, while Gerlind's missed or glanced off a tank's armor.

By this point the Japanese had started to establish a controlled zone, and were organizing with assigned zones of fire that included the rear lines where you lay. The Imperial archers were largely suppressed, as were the artillery. The Imperials in general were starting to break, their morale low from the chaos, the unholy racket of cannon and machinegun, the hellish smoke and fires not helping. The artillery were lobbing firepots quick as they could, making aiming slightly harder at least.

You aimed at a tank, fired, and saw the tank slam to a halt as the tread was destroyed. Tracking, you hit and killed another tank. Judging from the increased chaos, it must have held the enemy unit's commander. Sasha targeted another SPAAG, and though it wasn't destroyed the turret seemed to be immobilized; it was now far less of a threat. Gerlind's squad managed to ring the turret of another tank, panicking its crew but not doing any real damage.

With their commander dead, taking significant casualties and under real threat for the first time, the Japanese armor weren't responding well. You figured that rather than retreating now you'd stay and cause a bit more damage. The Imperials, meanwhile, had broken though the artillery were bravely maintaining position to lay down more smoke. You fired, immobilizing another tank though your follow up shot was slightly hasty. Sasha's squad hit another near the cannon. Though the turret didn't stop, and the tank wasn't immobilized, the fire became much less accurate; you thought they might have hit whatever was being used for night-vision. Gerlind's group seemed less effective in the smoke, missing above and around their target.

Then the American armor came out of the Gate. It was obvious to your eyes. They were simply better soldiers. Rapidly analyzing the situation, the burned out and immobilized hulls of their fellows, they pushed through the front, crashing through the palisade and inspiring the Japanese to follow them. The Imperial retreat, already shaky, turned into a full on rout. You decided it was time to go.

"Last volley, last volley!" you cried out, switching to a more rapid but lower power fire to make the tankers a bit more hesitant to chase you. Sasha's squad managed another mobility kill, while Gerlind's took out an American machine-gunner or tank commander who had stuck his head out of the turret. And with that, your battle was done. It was time for a rapid retrograde.

"Fall back, fall back!" you ordered, then lifted a whistle to your lips and blew for attention. "Stay low, speed slow! We'll still move faster than the others, and I don't want anyone trying to fly through the ground. Sasha, lead the way. I'll take the rear, go!"

[center]================================[/center]

Now _1_ _st_ _Lieutenant_ Itami was sitting in a nominally bullet-proofed Toyota high mobility vehicle wondering what the fuck _anyone_ had been thinking.

He'd had a pretty busy week. Following his admittedly impressive defense of the palace, caught by dozens of camera-phones and camcorders, he had been lauded as a hero and hastily awarded an Order of the Rising Sun – the first for military merit since World War II. When he met the Prime Minister for the ceremony and a bit of public relations, the man had asked him if there was anything he wanted. Without thinking about it, Itami had replied:

"I want to go through the Gate." And he really _did._ This was definitely the most exciting thing that had happened in his entire life. If a whole new fantasy world couldn't cure his ennui, then he was doomed.

"Your bravery is truly a credit to the JSDF, Lieutenant Itami," the Prime Minister praised, recovering from the surprise of a junior officer seriously taking him up on his question. "I'll have a word with General Hazama; he'll be sure to find a space for you in the expedition."

At that point, Itami froze. He really hadn't meant to speak. Or he had, but only to say some banality, like "I am only happy to have been able to serve Japan." No, instead he had to end up _actually_ asking for something. From the Prime Minister. Who was then going to speak to a _Lieutenant General_.

There was a simple rule that Itami lived by in the army. Attract as little attention from superiors as possible. That goes ten times over for _generals_. Hell, no soldier wanted a general to be personally interested in them, unless maybe they're family. Plus, even if Hazama wasn't pissed off by this situation, Itami would probably end up cooling his heels and fetching coffee as a lowly lieutenant who's part of the command staff.

So the next day when he got his orders to show up to the newly established Gate Expeditionary Headquarters, and left waiting for hours outside some adjutant's office, he wasn't overly optimistic.

Then he was finally called in, handed new rank tabs, and told to immediately meet the recon battalion commander. The platoon leader for the third recon team had had to have an emergency surgery, and now Itami would be taking that command. Itami was pretty excited by the whole thing; leading a recon unit in a new world was about as awesome as it gets.

His optimism faded quickly.

The Gate Expeditionary Force, or GEF, was a clusterfuck in the making. The Diet seemed to be heading in the direction of deciding that a region at _least_ matching that of Japan's borders would be seized, likely in the belief or hope that the Gate effect was location specific, rather than that any place could have a Gate from any other place. That meant that the JSDF would be expanding, and would include a new army.

Of course, that army had to be drawn from _somewhere_ , and so all the other, existing armies were contributing with the greatest portion coming from the Eastern Army. But the other armies were still needed; China was being particularly belligerent, and though there had been no critical incidents or attacks, Japanese and Chinese planes were frequently intercepting each other over disputed territories.

The biggest problem was that there wasn't the equipment for the army to expand so quickly, and the existing armies had successfully argued they needed the most modern equipment to face a real army, the Chinese.

That meant the GEF was underequipped with aging, mothballed gear. Itami's platoon, for example, had a nice modern Komatsu LAV, a beat-up barely bulletproofed Type 73 Shin truck which still had Iraqi sand in it, and a Toyota Humvee clone. No unit that small should have three _different_ vehicles to worry about, three different types of maintenance and spare parts.

Hell, even the most basic part of an infantryman's kit, the rifles, were a joke. They were armed with Howa Type-64s, a series of rifle last produced before 1990, some of which were literally older than Itami. They'd given the things a lot of tender loving care after getting them, but the guns were old, overcomplicated and had a reputation for breaking under serious use.

Against primitives it would probably be fine. But even if everyone else seemed to be able to, Itami couldn't ignore the fucking _magical girls_. Well, boys too. But in spare moments he'd caught the news coverage of that beautiful blonde devil, seen the recovered images of her tearing helicopters apart as if they were made of cardboard, remembered what it was like to face her in battle. He didn't believe his vehicles would fare any better than the helicopters, and she seemed the sort to take particular pleasure in instantly destroying isolated detachments of scouts like Itami's.

Command wise things weren't going well either. The Americans, justified by their casualties and the legitimate heroism they had displayed in coming to Tokyo's aide, were going to be participating in the expedition and taking a portion of its spoils. Already the US-Japanese governments were signing treaties, Japanese-US business partnerships forming. But it wasn't a seamless cooperation.

Japan was in nominal charge, and was supplying a full half of the twelve thousand troops in the initial wave. But the US was matching that, not only in troops sent, but in rank of commanding officer. Lt. General Richards, previously in charge of the US Marine Corp's 3rd Expeditionary Force, was in charge of the American contingent. The man was a disciple of Mattis' aggressive maneuver and counter-insurgency tactics, and had overseen the battle for Fallujah in Iraq and Helmund Province in Afghanistan.

It seemed Richards was already disagreeing with Hazama's strategy. He was being respectful for an American, but to the more reserved Japanese they might as well have been having screaming matches and rumors were already circulation among the troops.

Hazama was a great administrator, but perhaps too much enamored of outdated tactical thinking for this sort of war. He believed in having relatively safe advances. Take, fortify, pacify, proceed; that was his motto. If possible, he'd have every engagement at stand-off distances, using copious amounts of artillery and air support.

In contrast, Richards was a warrior. He wanted to get up in the enemy's face and rip it off, keeping a high tempo and aggressive action. Hazama saw that as needlessly reckless and risky for the troops. Major General Steton, the top US Army officer, agreed with Richards. He though just mostly believed the Japanese to be untested, and had a subconscious sense of American superiority in general. Steton liked Richards, and thought that he was the perfect man to be leading from a military sense, considering Hazama's appointment the sort of political move that damaged military effectiveness.

Worst of all, it was starting to infect the interactions between the US and Japanese services.

So between politicians already cutting up a pie they didn't even have yet, aging dissimilar equipment and generals more disdainful of each other than the actual enemy, Itami was feeling pretty down. But he never doubted their eventual victory, just as he'd never doubted his own capabilities. His radio buzzed with a general announcement.

"Ah! Lieutenant, they're moving through the Gate!" Sergeant Major Kuwahara said excitedly. He had a tablet out, connected to a nearby wifi and was streaming the news. The station had an embedded reporter with the lead tank company. Ironically, the best way for Itami to stay current on what was happening at the front was through the news.

His own unit, part of the Japanese Reconnaissance contingent, was fifth in line behind the Japanese then US tanks and Japanese then US mechanized infantry. As much as Special Forces or Recon might be more famous, for shear firepower the armored units were far better. Odds were they'd either have taken the Gate or failed entirely before Recon got through.

"Turn the volume up, Sergeant Major," Itami said.

"Sure, Lt." He turned up the volume, and they peered at the small screen as the news station cut to the reporter's feed.

"We're about to go through the Gate, we've just been given the order to advance," the reporter excitedly said. He had the look of a military otaku who's dream had come through. The view showed the interior of the Gate, a strange shadowy space with a double line of Type 74 tanks moving through at a decent speed. The reporter's was the third in line.

"Now, I'm told that we're using smoke to cover our movement on the other side, so the view may be obstructed. OK, we're moving through the Gate, and I cannot wait to see what's on the other side!" he exclaimed. The tank transited, and came out into a scene from hell.

The area was covered in smoke. Fires spilled out over the grasses. Guns fired on full auto, and the camera caught the impact of an explosive shell on a stretch of defended palisade. The tank and its neighbor slewed off to the right, the camera coming about to look to the side just in time to catch the other tank exploding.

"Enemy anti-tank weapons, rear!" Itami heard one of the tank crew shouting as the reporter swore in shock. A secondary explosion went off and the reporter's tank rocked sideways as the turret slammed into it. The inside view of the tank showed the crew rattling about like peas in a pod.

"Holy shit, holy shit!" the reporter was screaming.

"Shut up, reporter!" the tank commander cried, slapping him. "Anyone injured? No? Gunner, traverse the turret and fuck them up!" Quieter, the reporter started to babble.

"Our neighboring tank was just hit with some sort of anti-tank weapon. It may be action from the so called magical-girls. I doubt there were survivors," in the background, Itami could see the commander shooting a look at the reporter of incredulous rage; a civilian had no right to be saying that kind of shit in the middle of combat. "Clearly, the enemy is far more dangerous than their primitive equipment would demonstrate."

On the outside of the tank the camera continued to traverse and switched views, catching the growing number of immobilized and destroyed vehicles. Itami closed his eyes and briefly prayed. He prayed for the dead, for himself, and that there weren't more of those magical girls. Then he tilted his head back, and wondered not for the first time:

 _What the_ _everloving_ _ **FUCK**_ _was I thinking_.

[center]================================[/center]

Overall, the retreat went about as well as could be expected. Marius' men had been infected with the general panic. Then he rallied them, screamed them into obedience and reminded them that they had prepared for this, established supplies, and could make it away safely. He ended up getting away safely with not only his own regiment, but a neighboring cohort of axemen and a mixed cohort of sword-and-bucklers and crossbowmen, a total of about two thousand men.

As planned, he'd left his light cavalry behind with Aisha's squad until the last moments, ensuring that the captives wouldn't be menaced by panicked Imperials or deserters. The horsemen chased off a band of nihilistic marauding soldiers, maddened with fear, before rejoining the general retreat. You and the Storm-Hawks took the very rear, being most capable of seeing off pursuit.

It seemed though that the Japanese and Americans didn't have the appetite for more combat that night. Between the extensive damage you'd inflicted, the risk of more casualties, and a _lot_ of Imperials to capture or mop up in the area, the allied forces stayed put until daylight. By that point Marius and his command had reached the hilly region, and should make it safely to the Coan Forest and eventually Italica.

You'd done a bit of rapid scouting of the rest of the Imperial retreat, staying close enough to the ground to avoid radar and anti-air. It seemed as though Crassus was in charge, and Pontius was by his side. You didn't see Julius, but his personal pennant was still there so he was likely among the injured. Overall, you estimated that about thirty-five thousand Imperials had rallied, including the majority of the Legions. A similar number, mostly mercenaries and auxiliaries, had deserted and would likely turn to banditry or try and return to their homes.

Overall, the Imperial army was at less than forty percent of the strength it started at.

As for gains, well… You can assume your reputation with the general army is improved; you know Marius is amazed at how you managed to keep his unit together and alive. For pure combat effectiveness, you've figured out how to destroy tanks with much greater efficiency, and Sasha's squad has demonstrated a distinct proficiency in anti-armor action.

For enemy losses, you counted two tanks and a SPAAG destroyed, five tanks and a SPAAG rendered combat ineffective. They'd likely be able to repair most of the immobilized tanks without _too_ much difficulty, but it had certainly served to stop the advance which was what you were going for.

 _Fuck you, Being X. That wasn't even close to enough to phase me,_ you thought darkly.

Now you just needed to decide what to do next…


	12. Homebodies

**Post 12: Homebodies**

* * *

[Spoiler= "Winning Vote"]

[X] Plan Screw This, Go Home

-[X] Hunt down/take control over deserters

-[X] Sasha's unit will make wide patrol sweeps to recover or put down as many deserters and lost troops as possible. If they encounter GEF patrols they are to retreat rather than engage. If they pass by any local villages they are to relay a general summary of events to them and order the locals to remain passive. No resistance, but no need go out of their way to help the invaders either. Cooperation with them will not be punished, however. Stomp on any deserters raiding the local countryside, HARD.

-[X] Return to Italica

-[X] Tanya and remaining units will escort/protect remaining 100 captives back to Italica, sending a messenger ahead to ask for supplies to meet you half-way. During the trip, Tanya will engage with the Japanese (mimicking the pidgin her subordinates use, but rapidly becoming smoother as she gives the illusion of picking up the language) captives to attempt to establish herself and her family as a reasonable authority on this side of the Gate.

-[X] Upon returning to Italica, Tanya will use her knowledge base and the excuse of having seen the other side of the Gate to begin putting together a diplomatic mission (with the permission of mother, father, & local authorities) to be held under a white flag painted with an olive branch (for greater visibility, of course). The goal of which will be the opening of discourse between the city-state of Italica & the polities backing the armies now marching through the Gate, ensuring the safety of Italica from direct assault/siege/bombing, and establishing Italica as a neutral area in which discussions between official representatives of the belligerent parties can be held in the future.

-[X] Tanya, as a recognizable face and with a small number of the remaining captives (others held in reserve as leverage), will accompany the mission as its head (hopefully). Remember & Emphasize what authority you are/aren't given on behalf of Italica and the Empire as a whole. Make no promises which might endanger Italica or your own family's standing within the empire.

-[X] Send a messenger to mange reinforcements to redirect them to meet up with the Imperial Army Remnant inst as of heading towards the Gate. [/Spoiler]

* * *

 _5/17/687 - 5/31/687 of the Imperial Calendar (Age 15 years)._

As you, your company, Marius' growing army and a hundred captives who had volunteered to be your temporary guests successfully escaped the invading Japanese and Americans, you turned you attention to the future.

Sasha and her squad, having just demonstrated their combat proficiency against modern armor, were dispatched to hunt down and take control over deserters and other escaped survivors from that fiasco. They were instructed to make wide patrol sweeps, and either recover or put down as many deserters and lost troops as possible. Meanwhile, they'd spread the news to the local communities, warning them to prepare their militias against the possibility of brigands, for all the good lightly armed farmers would do, and instruct them neither to resist nor aid the invaders.

You yourself took Aisha's squad and Gerlind's along with Marius' retreat. The main goal there was to get back to Italica, and get put in a place of influence over the negotiations with the invaders; it would be a _far_ stretch, but you hoped that you might even be made the envoy and given full powers over the negotiation.

The secondary goal was to win the hearts and minds of the captives you brought with you. Aisha had started that job off well, but you wanted to do the best you could. On the other hand, you couldn't just _give up_ all the hostages, especially without knowing how the Japanese felt about you. You knew you were going to lose the Gate-zone; it was just impossible for there to be any other eventuality. Inflicting more casualties would have helped with establishing peace terms, but you'd done enough if it was coupled with good reports from the prisoners.

So you did something _very_ clever. Days before the Gate fell you went to the captives. Then, you asked for volunteers, and offered incentives. You promised they'd be treated as honored guests of your family, on one of your mother's vineyards. You appealed to their better nature, turning up your cuteness and claiming that you just wanted to learn how to speak with them, about their lives, so that peace might have a chance. And then you gave the real clincher; you offered that everyone that ended up volunteering and being selected as a guest would get at least a one hour ride of flight.

You ended up having to break up a fight over who'd get to come.

But having managed that, you were practically obligated to accompany them.

As for how these planned actually worked out, well…

[center]============================[/center]

Sasha Garda had had very… _varied_ experiences over the past few years. First she was a bandits' plaything, then a young noble mage's slave-maid, then a trainee healer. Now she was a fully qualified aerial mage, Oathsworn to the legend in the making Tanya Longina, an auxiliary Centurion in the Saderan Army and leading an independent combat patrol following their loss to the steel wizards at the Gate.

Well, according to Mistress they weren't _actually_ wizards, and Mistress was never wrong. But as far as she was concerned, managing to fly _without_ magic was actually _more_ magical than the alternative.

Luckily, her orders didn't include engaging those _Japanese_ or _American_ soldiers. In fact, she was to avoid doing so if possible, and only take aggressive action if fired on first.

No, her orders were to hunt down deserters. To co-opt them if possible, and destroy them if not. That was the kind of mission she could get behind. To make it so that no one suffered what she had. And to be fair, she was doing an _amazing_ job of it.

Early on in the patrol, she'd found an auxiliary Ala of cavalry, just under half a thousand horsemen. Though they were retreating and had lost the rest of the army in the night, they were still in good order and showing signs of military discipline. So she deputized them, giving them a copy of a map and directing them to split up, retake control of other isolated units, warn villages, and destroy any deserters who turned to banditry.

With that success buoying their spirits, her squad rapidly zoomed about the place, deputizing other units, destroying bandits, and raising the local militias. She was fairly stunned; it was likely that _she_ , once so weak, would be responsible (under Mistress' command, of course!) for keeping a major part of the _entire Italican province_ from suffering disaster.

Mistress would be so happy!

She was preoccupied with thoughts of ever-rare praise when she saw it. The dragon. And not one of those lesser wyverns, or even a drake. No, this was a full-grown Flame Dragon, capable of destroying towns and cities. If she'd had more warning, been flying higher, she might have been able to avoid it. But as it was, flying low to avoid the fell magics of _radar_ and _anti-air missiles_ , she had not noticed warning signs until she crested a valley's ridge and was practically on top of the beast.

She was about to give the order to flee, when she saw them. A turmae's worth of the _Japanese_ or _Americans_ – she knew that the distinction was important, but not how to distinguish – were engaged with the dragon, trying to protect a caravan of what looked like refugees.

She thought for a few seconds, her subordinates huddling close to her in fear.

They'd have to attack the dragon, she decided. Leaving it alive would be against the spirit of their orders, to preserve Italica. While engaging it might build bridges with the other-worlders, which would doubtless please Mistress.

"Alright, squad, listen up!" she said, unconsciously mirroring her idol's posture and tone.

[center]============================[/center]

Lieutenant Yoji Itami was once again considering what the hell he'd been thinking, volunteering to go through the Gate. His Recon team was alright, even if their equipment wasn't what he'd hoped for.

No, his current issue wasn't with unthinkingly volunteering for something. It was with something he was _voluntold_ to do.

"To promote integration and cooperation," Japanese and American Recon teams were switched into each other's platoons. And to improve the image of such a move, the _Hero of Ginza_ was leading the way.

Whether he wanted to or not.

And really, honestly, he was feeling the _not_.

He'd been assigned to join up with Captain Richard Johnson's platoon of Deep Reconnaissance Marines. If Itami had to describe them, he'd say they were serious, enthusiastic killers. And his immediate superior for this mission, Johnson, was even more so than usual.

The man's name apparently had some unfortunate connotations in English. As a result, faced with laughing it off, becoming bitter or getting tough, Johnson chose the third option and became as tough as he possible could. He enlisted in the Marine Corps at seventeen. While still a recruit, he semi-legendarily busted a particularly nasty drill instructor's knee in martial arts training, and managed to graduate despite being ridden hard by all the other DI's afterwards. He was in Iraq killing people when Japan would still have considered him a minor. Then he went to the Naval Academy, became an officer, and went back to Iraq and Afghanistan before ending up in Recon in Japan.

Itami knew the man had earned the right to be leading one of the first teams to go out into this new world. The problem was, Itami knew that in comparison he himself was _not_ qualified. And he could see the look of disappointment in the captain and other marines as they realized that _yes_ , this lax looking laid-back scrawny Japanese officer was, in fact, the supposed 'badass fucking _warrior_ '.

Beyond that, his own troops were an embarrassment. They might have been the best of the Japanese army, but they were green. And the marines knew it. Knew they hadn't killed, hadn't been shot at in truth, hadn't had to watch friends and comrades get injured or die.

So Itami had spent days _not_ squirming the way he wanted to in embarrassment, days watching as his troops' morale sank as every action, every moment, rubbed in just how much better and harder the Americans were.

Clearly he'd have to step up his game.

And to make things worse, the patrol hadn't really been interesting. Some different plants, sure, but grass was grass and trees were trees. For a fantasy world with dragons and such, it hadn't been too exciting.

Until, of course, it was _far too_ interesting and they were left trying to evacuate a village from a _true_ dragon.

Which had just shown up. Itami didn't have to know much about dragons to realize that this one was _very_ unhappy. And, judging from the absolute lack of effect, practically immune to .50 caliber machineguns.

And then those fucking _magical girls_ showed up…

[center]============================[/center]

Sasha and her three squad-mates came in just in time to prevent the other-worlders from being burned and eaten. It looked like one of their horseless wagons had crashed before the aerial mages arrived, and between that and some gouts of flame the men were in a poor position though she couldn't see any dead.

Coming in from behind the dragon, she peppered it's head with explosive spells, stunning it and making it abort its attack on the overturned vehicle. The green-clad troops rallied, using their _guns_ and _grenade launchers_ to harass the massive beast. Targeting a forward shoulder joint, Sasha used an anti-armor shot on it, reducing the monster's mobility while her squad continued to detonate explosive spells around it's head, stunning it.

Realizing that it was in a losing fight, half-deaf and blind from the explosions, the dragon lurched upwards, spreading its wings to flee. The wings proved an irresistible target for Sasha's mages and their relatively fragile membranes were torn to shreds by explosive spells.

 ** _"SCREAROAR!"_** the dragon screamed in pain, falling back to the earth and stumbling as its front arm failed to support it. The soldiers from beyond the gate continued to shoot it ineffectively. Sasha's troops, however, were much more impactful. Still recovering from its fall and recoiling from its injuries, the head was a clear and easy target for the repeated explosive bolts they fired off.

Shaking its head in pain, the dragon twisted just in time for its ear to catch an explosive bolt that was going to narrowly miss before the movement. The explosion went off, the concussive force travelling through the dragon's skull and into its brain. Swaying drunkenly, it collapsed, unconscious or dead. Its massive vitality had proved ineffective in the face of Mistress' magics and training.

"One more volley!" Sasha cried out, sending another wave of explosions at the dragon. It didn't budge, and eventually the booming rattle of the other-worlders _guns_ ceased. The area now safe, Sasha rocketed forwards to the dragon's still head. Pointing her spear's tip inside it's ear, she sent off a trio of anti-armor shots, penetrating into its skull before the explosive part of the spell activated and pulped the monster's brain.

Zooming back to her troops, she saw they were in a somewhat tense standoff with some of the foreign soldiers. Others were frantically trying to rescue and treat the injured, particularly those still trapped in the mangled iron wagon.

Sasha knew that it was a risk, but providing healing would certainly save their lives and further her mistress' interests.

"Stand down," she ordered, her troop grounding their spears and deescalating the situation. "I'm going to go heal them, I want everyone else to stay here, stay still, and look innocent."

Sasha walked forwards after handing her spear to one of her squad-mates. One of their warriors raised his weapon, shouting something she didn't understand as she got closer. Unfortunately her duties had left her less time to learn the language than Aisha.

"I mean no harm," she said softly, calmly, trying to get her meaning across by tone. The men relaxed some, but still didn't point the _gun_ away. She raised her hands, showing no ill intent, then slowly reached down and drew her knife. The warriors tensed again.

Moving slowly, she brought the knife across her hand, showing them the blood blossoming from the cut as she winced, then still slowly replaced the blade. She brought her other hand up, allowing it to glow with healing energies before healing the cut she had inflicted moments earlier. She took her drinking skin, pouring it over her hand and washing away the blood to the green-clad men's amazement. Then she pointed at the downed vehicle.

"I just want to help. Healing, yes?"

One of the men, of smaller stature, yellow-ish skin and wearing slightly different clothes, came to a decision. He nodded, and barked something in his barbarian tongue before beckoning her forwards.

By her actions, none of those men died that day.

Mistress would be so happy!

[center]============================[/center]

Your march to Italica wasn't going so well. The terrain was rough, and despite managing to secure the pre-prepared caches supplies were low. When you sent Gerlind and his squad along the route to see if they could secure more supplies from Italica or the nearby villages, you found out that the majority of pre-prepared foodstuffs had already been sold to the army when it first arrived. Morale was relatively low.

So was your speed. Your new _guests_ were unused to walking long distances. To the modern man or woman, ten miles is long way to go in a day, and may need recovery the next. Even having them ride pillion behind some of the cavalrymen, or on the spare horses, didn't help much; riding too takes muscles, and rubs the inner thighs something _fierce_ when you're not ready for it. Suffice to say, the guests didn't have a good time of it, and ended up lacking the energy to talk much.

As you went along, you had your aerial mages bring them on hour long flights though, and that they _loved_. You heard one relatively young Japanese man with punkish dyed brown hair remark that it was " _worth_ being kidnapped for this shit".

Hearts and minds, _huh_? More like shiny presents and fun experiences.

Your senses and tracking spells, far more attuned to and capable of dealing with other aerial threats than your troops were, detected Japanese or American scout drones, but it seemed as if the allied forces were content to see where you were and didn't take action against you. Yet.

When you arrived in Italica, the city was pretty freaked out. The lead units of the retreat had already arrived. You had noted, back in the Empire, that it seemed as if there was a universal law of soldiering. Notably, that in a retreat, the first unit back is always one led by the most cowardly commander who inevitably makes things sound worse than they really were. In this case, with things so bad, it led to a lot of concern within the city.

News of the main retreat's fate had come in. The modern military had secured the Gate area, then chased down the fleeing remnants. The armored and mechanized units had easily caught up, and began capturing or killing units in massive numbers. The entire army might have fallen but for the actions of an as-yet unknown appointed centurion.

The junior officer had noticed that the Japanese and American forces preferred to capture rather than kill. In a spark of inspired genius, he came up with the idea of non-violent protest. He ordered his men to drop their weapons, then spread out and not move at all when the steel beasts came. His actions bought time, and inspired the next unit to do the same when they were about to be captured, then the next unit after that.

In the end, about half of the remaining troops made it out, and the seventeen thousand men were a few days away from reaching Italica. You had no information yet on how the deserters or units that had lost the main retreat fared.

As your new other-worldly guests settled in for some pampering at one of your mother's villas, you went to see your parents and Count Formal. Your goal was for your parents to back you in your bid to be appointed negotiator, preferably with plenipotentiary status, between the province of Italica and the invading force.

It went far better than you had hoped for. You had estimated less than a one-percent chance of meeting all objectives with both your parents and Count Formal; it paid off. Two days later you had been briefed on everything the Count thought you should be aware of, and had "learned" enough Japanese to communicate.

The former captives, now guests of your family, were settling in well. Blatant bribes, including commemorative friendship bracelets in enchanted silver, were well received. You also had them given badges announcing that they were friends of House Longinus, which would provide a measure of protection. And for once your adorable aura wasn't a negative; it was hard for the guests to blame such a cute girl for anything.

You set out for the allied forces with your entourage. Deciding to go with a less-is-more approach, you left Aisha's squad to ensure the security of your guests (and keep buttering them up), while bringing Gerlind's squad as you bodyguard. Lucia was coming as your advisor, Marcellus as her guard, and you were bringing along one of the former captives.

You had picked Abe Yumiko, an early-twenties Japanese woman and recent college graduate. She was very hard working and enthusiastic, athletic, intelligent, straightforward and a bit crude by Japanese standards. Most importantly, she was favorably inclined towards you, if not the rest of the Empire, and had been a leader and motivator for the other captives. She was also related to a senior politician, which couldn't hurt.

Soon enough, you and yours arrived a few miles away from the allied forces. You had come in flying relatively slowly. Your troops carried a white flag, an olive branch, and a flagstaff with Italica's flag over Count Formal's with your own heraldry at the bottom. Marcellus carried your mother's flag. You came to a stop, then descended and proceeded on foot.

There was a momentary tense standoff as guards aimed weapons at you. Then Yumiko stepped forward, and started yelling at them in rapid-fire Japanese, demanding that they lower their weapons and asking them what the hell they thought they were doing to a diplomatic party. Did they know who her uncle was? Because unless they shaped up quickly, she'd be sure they wished they didn't.

It was hilarious. And effective; it got you through the checkpoint, though you had to leave your gun and knife with your escorts. Marcellus also had to disarm, and you were only allowed to bring Lucia, Marcellus and Yumiko inside. The rest of your escort were left waiting outside.

Not the best way to start a negotiation, and somewhat against the typical dictates of diplomacy. On the other hand, you could use that.

After a few minutes of waiting, a more senior officer, likely one of the generals' aides, showed up in a jeep-like car to drive you to where the meeting would take place. You were shown inside to large tent which had been set up as a conference room with snacks and water on the table. There were four figures on the Japanese-American side of the table, with aides and translators in the background and a pair of MPs at the door. Two of the figures were Japanese, one in uniform and the other a suit. The two Americans were in uniform, one with three stars and other two.

"Allow me to introduce, Ambassador Plenipotentiary Prefect Lady Tanya Longina. Her advisor, Sage Lucia Longina. Her guard, Sage Prefect Marcellus Iuvenalis. And I am Abe Yumiko," she said in Japanese before breaking out of her seriousness and turning to the man in the suit and smiling. "It's good to see you again, Minister Noburu."

In the background you could see translators talking into microphones to make sure their superiors didn't miss any of this information. Everyone seemed fairly surprised that the disarmingly adorable blonde was in fact the senior official for this meeting.

"It's good to see you again too, Yumiko. I hope you're well?" he asked, concerned.

"It's been quite the adventure," she said smiling. "But we've been well treated by Lady Tanya's troops."

"Good," he said, sighing in relief. "Your uncle will be relieved to hear it. As for my fellows, please let me introduce the Commanding Officer of the Gate Expeditionary Force, Lieutenant Geneneral Kouichirou Hazama of the Japanese Ground Self Defense Force. His second, and the senior officer of the United States' contribution to the GEF, Lieutenant General Taylor Richards of the United States Marine Corps. The second in command of the US contingent, and senior officer present from the US Army, Major General Matthew Steton. And I'm Noburu Kazuki, Cabinet Minister for Japan and the senior civilian administrator for the Special Region." You all exchanged polite bows and handshakes. In the background you saw soldiers with cameras, likely from their public relations teams, taking photographs.

"It is pleasure to meet you all," you said in faltering Japanese, noting their faint surprise. "I look forward to productive meeting, and reduction of conflict."

"I as well," Kazuki replied.

"So. I note important, I represent Count Formal and Province of Italica. Not Empire as whole. But, we are all _in_ province, so is important and has much impact. Shall we begin discussion of terms to end fighting?"

"Understood. Before we begin, I wanted to express our thanks to you for the actions of Sasha Garda and her platoon. They engaged a large fire-breathing dragon, saving a platoon of American Marines and Japanese soldiers, then proceeded to heal our wounded troops. Due to her actions, all of our men survived," he said before giving a short bow. You hadn't heard yet, and a massive smile broke out on your face.

"Ah, she is doing well then. I am glad, will give praise and reward when she returns from patrol," you replied.

"Please express our gratitude as well; we are considering awarding her a decoration, if that is acceptable."

"Is most acceptable. Must reward good work," you agreed. He nodded.

"Onto business then. Let's start off with the captives. We understand from the reports of those already freed that you ensured that they would be under your cousin's keeping, and posted your own mages to ensure their safety. We're very grateful for that, but we would like to ensure that the remaining captives are released."

"We also have many who were captured by you, on other side of Gate, and after your troops beat army. We discuss?"

"We see a fundamental difference in captured civilians, and captured military personnel. It is unacceptable that you continue to hold our people prisoner."

"Ah, not understand," you said slyly. "We no have prisoners anymore." The GEF representatives jolted forwards.

"What? What happened to them?"

"Were freed. Only have guests of House Longinus. Asked first, when waiting at Gate. Only take volunteers."

"And why did they volunteer?" the minister asked suspiciously. You smiled guilelessly. That particular expression had required _a lot_ of practice to get right; it was so unnatural.

"Aisha, my second, who guards, offers my apologies while prisoner. I saw when in Tokyo. Japanese speak foreign, but not barbarian. Invasion mistake. Want to make better for captives, so offer that when in Italica, if possible, will be guests of family. Many want to go, want to try flying with my boys and girls. Sadly retreat, can only take one hundred. Food, horses limited. Need guests to be strong for moving. Yumiko tell."

"That's right. There must have been five people volunteering for every space. Lady Tanya was forced to prioritize by age and fitness, as well as being able to speak Japanese." One of the generals coughed suspiciously to prevent himself from laughing.

"Yes. But, offer also, later, when peace any who was captive may come visit for week or month. May bring close family too. But, only two hundred fifty at same time."

This maneuver, turning captives into guests, put the allied forces in a _very_ tight spot. Most of the civilians might be thinking it an adventure, but they were still very much hostages, and the military officers knew it. But legally and in terms of public relations and such, removing voluntary guests is much harder than rescuing captives. General Hazama leaned forwards.

"We request to send a security team to ensure their safety."

"Want to say yes, but depend on discussion. Cannot have enemy troop in home, treason. Or city walls, foolishness. But if not enemy, allowed. Is thirty enough? Or need more?" you asked.

"Thirty should be fine," the man replied.

Unfortunately, the following discussion on Saderan prisoners went worse. They were only willing to discuss Italican prisoners, and only on a case-by-case basis depending on what actions those prisoners took beyond the Gate. You did manage to get guarantees that Italican prisoners would be well treated, and their cases given priority judgement. Further, Italica was allowed to send a delegation of advocates to advise the tribunals and make arguments to the civilian judiciary.

With that first issue dealt with, you moved onto more general demands for peace. All in all, the terms were remarkably generous. Italica could keep its troops, so long as they didn't make hostile movement against the GEF. The GEF would post a military advisor with Count Formal, and expected to be informed of major troop movements. Meanwhile, the GEF would inform the Count if their troops had to take actions within Italica, and would give warning before moving into or nearby major population centers. Count Formal would maintain control of the province for at least the interim, and there was no requirement to act against Imperial Forces.

Overall, you were very happy with the terms. They maintained the status-quo in your territory, at least for the most part, and were loose enough not to force you against any oaths. In fact, you had explained your oaths ahead of time, knowing that the allies would want to ensure that your forces weren't forced to fight against them, and to raise a degree of sympathy for being mystically bound.

The general parts decided, you got down to brass tacks and thorny details.

First was the topic of democracy versus the vaguely hereditary oligarchy which the Empire operated under. The Japanese wanted to force democracy; in general they wanted to turn the region into one of their territories. You countered by issues of education, knowledge, wealth and power imbalances. The Americans were actually more in favor of the nobility option, valuing stability and security over imposing foreign ideals. In the end you agreed to table the discussion until later.

In the meantime, all soldiers and citizens from beyond the Gate would be subject to their own laws. Socially, common soldiers would be afforded the privileges of Equites, while officers would be treated as minor nobility.

With that settled, you moved onto one of the most contentious topics. Slavery.

Both the Japanese and Americans were generally against it. Then you asked them what alternative there was. How would slaves survive, where would the food come from. All those problems associated with massive and rapid shifts of the workforce.

Beyond that, their owners rights would be violated too. Causing a massive economic depression would make it impossible for other provinces to peacefully come under the Japanese umbrella, and their own job would become impossible if banditry and civil strife took over.

You floated the idea of all slaves automatically buying themselves out of slavery, with an interest free debt that had to be paid back to their former masters. Basically, nothing would _really_ change. Former slaves would have to work hard, and might earn their freedom before they died. Until then, their employers would be responsible for food, shelter, a set of clothes a year, and a small payment (depending on skill and hours worked) to pay into the debts.

The modern men didn't go for it, unfortunately.

Then you brought up slaves due to crimes or debts. Without slavery, many of the criminals would have to be executed, and vicious physical punishments reinstated. The representatives didn't want to be responsible for that, and so it was decided that criminal and debt slaves would continue to serve their sentences, at least for now.

You also managed to avoid expectations of general human rights until productivity and average wealth began to catch up with Japanese standards. You figured you'd have died of old age before that happened, so it was a non-issue.

On the other hand, you floated the idea of programs that would give assistance in return for freeing slaves. Soil testing, agricultural training, advanced equipment, modern seeds and plants – all of these could massively improve food yields and the ability to store agricultural surplus. And it would be a good way to motivate farm owners to free slaves.

The Japanese and Americans were almost falling over themselves to buy into the program. It would allow them a lot of influence with wealthy landowners, and allowed them to make progress in Italica while looking good in public relations back home. They also offered the possibility of establishing factories, selling hand-crafted goods, and other trade benefits that would make money for individuals willing to work with them while freeing slaves and then employing them.

After a brief conversation with your mother, she volunteered to be the first adopter for this program. She was the perfect candidate; she had a lot of land and slaves, but didn't truly depend on them and wasn't much interested in their activities so if it failed she wouldn't be _too_ upset, though you'd be in the doghouse for a bit. On the other hand, as the first adopter when the allies were intent on showing that the program could work, she should get the most favorable terms. Beyond that, you knew how to phrase things just right.

You weren't sure if the Japanese Minister or his general picked up on it, but the Americans who had previously been dealing with Middle Eastern tribal elders and local strong men _definitely_ did. You were giving them the opportunity to connect your fortunes, and your family's fortunes, to cooperating with the Americans and Japanese rather than fighting them. Considering you represented a company-strength group capable of an extended guerilla campaign, with the firepower to destroy tanks and the speed to chase down any isolated ground unit, it was a military necessity to either get you on-side, or destroy you. These sort of economic bribes were far cheaper than tanks and helicopters, let alone the political capital consumed with every Japanese or American life lost.

And you, of course, were happy to milk the situation for everything you could.

As for the current slave trade, after some discussion they decreed that there would be no new sales.

Luckily, you were able to walk them back from that. Slaves were labor. Locking in the labor meant that a business that was failing would be unable to economize its workforce. Which meant _bad things_ for the slaves there, and for productivity in general. You brought up these issues, and how slave traders may be motivated to harm the slaves they had. Instead, no _new_ people could be made slaves against their will, and existing slaves may still be sold, but if part of a family the family cannot be broken up and must be sold as a unit.

New criminals and debt slaves would be indentured servants, at fixed repayment rates and with higher personal protections. They could _volunteer_ for extra duties beyond those that they had to provide, so long as such actions were legal, and they were expected to receive at least one-and-a-half times repayment rate depending on what those duties were.

Further, Italicans were still allowed to import from outside the region, but after that happened the slaves were subject to all rules and regulations.

The children of existing slaves would be free, and their care until age 14, including a specific meal quantity and quality and at least one set of clothes a year would be the responsibility of whoever owned the mother.

You had a few issues with that, and managed to get allowances for children to be sent to orphanages if both mother and master agreed. Further, if the mother was instructed to be chaste, and the owners took reasonable actions ensuring so, then the mother could decide between her debt being added onto (if they were indentured) or the child forcibly placed into an orphanage. Inspection and investigation of all instances in which a master used this option were required, with penalties including freeing the woman and a large fine to the woman and government for masters caught lying.

The current treatment of slaves, both their protections and enforcement of those protections, would be discussed at a later time when the culture, protections, traditional court rulings and methods of enforcement could be better discussed and the Japanese and Americans had had time to investigate and consider the issues involved.

From there you moved onto trade, a much less contentious topic. The allies wanted to establish a trading post, with no significant taxation or restrictions on worked goods. Live biological goods were more complicated, and would require study before being introduced into either world; a scientific lab would be part of the trading center for just that purpose.

You didn't have any issues with this. The one thing you did insist on was that any company or organization operating on your side of the Gate required at least partial local ownership. You didn't want all the wealth to flow in one direction, after all.

As for what you expected to develop into a new trading town, after a quick discussion with your mother in the almost incomprehensible high court dialect of Saderan you had a great solution. The town would be located on your mother's land, and she would be the principle local stake-holder. You, the Longinus family, and the Count would get sizeable portions too, as would the Japanese and American governments to distribute between their companies.

Currency was fairly easy to solve. The Japanese were willing to match coin to hard value currency equivalent. The trading post would have a bank and monetary exchange where the Japanese/US would trade for coins and allow access for that value of goods to be ordered from beyond the Gate in return. Subject, of course, to certain restricted technologies and materials not being purchasable. But anything a Japanese civilian could buy, so could you (if at a slight mark-up for transportation). That also provided a method for the allies to acquire local currency and gave them the opportunity to engage in further trade.

You made a note to yourself to try and purchase large tracts of previously low-value mountainous terrain where minerals were likely to be located.

The trade discussion fairly naturally segued into talking about supplies. The allies were willing to buy supplies from locals. However, they demanded the right for military units within Italica to buy at the legally established rates, just the same as the legions, wherever those supplies were available. That would have removed most of the potential profit.

While you agreed, you cunningly raised the issue of potential starvation from such tactics in smaller farming communities, and the fact that the army had already purchased much of this year's spare food. Variable quality and food safety was also a concern given the disparity between modern sensibilities and the Empire.

You suggested a supply contract so that their force could purchase a specific amount of foodstuff at a guaranteed quality. Transportation was negotiable, and could either be handled by the Japanese and American logistics groups taking these supplies from centralized shipping centers, or by allowing access to Italican transportation. Of course, your family could organize those supplies, distributing the demand across several local agricultural concerns and trading organization.

The allied forces agreed, which was great. You, or rather Mother, her family, and her managers would be able to use these relatively lucrative contracts to establish a coalition of aligned nobles and powerful merchants. And make a lot of money too, of course.

The discussion moved onto the sharing of military equipment, and here they wouldn't budge. There would be no purchase of modern military weapons, ammunition, grenades, vehicles… anything, really. Well, you had a crate of M4s, and mages could be trained to produce parts to sufficient dimensional accuracy. Beyond that, you knew rifle designs from your second life that were far easier to produce. The main stumbling block had been gunpowder, but with examples to give alchemists you didn't think guns were too far away.

That is, if you decided you _wanted_ guns. Your own troop could use magically powered bullets instead of chemically powered ones, and beyond that you weren't exactly sure you wanted to introduce gunpowder to the Empire. Well, you could always change your mind later, and having options was nice.

Though the allies were against supplying you with weapons, they agreed fairly easily to supplying you with troops. When you raised the topic of military protection, they volunteered to establish a quick reaction force (QRF) outside Italica. They also agreed to clean up bandits and deserters, patrol roads, and provide security for the trading center. Even if the Empire decided Italica needed to be punished for not fighting hard enough against an unbeatable foe, you should be safe.

They, on the other hand, were very interested in magic. However, you were constrained by your oath. Eventually you came to a good faith agreement in principle (basically, the weakest form of diplomatic agreement possible) that Mother would take on a student if the oaths could be worked out.

You did offer a demonstration. First Mother showed how she used magic in her art, astounding even the war-hardened officers with magic's grace and beauty. Then you all left the tent for a quick demonstration of your specialty at the base firing range. It helped firm up your negotiating stance and ensure the best bribes when you effortlessly took out a balloon attached to a UAV at twenty thousand feet.

Back inside, you moved away from military matters and onto who could use the Gate for transit as well as immigration. The allies were firm in keeping the Gate under military control, for government and military approved business only. If you had a specific request, that could be considered. In a few months the topic would be revisited when the situation on both sides of the Gate had had time to settle and the civilian leadership had weighed in on the topic.

Finally you moved onto the subject of the different types of assistance you'd like from the allied forces. Namely education, civil improvements, and medical assistance. The education was considered to be less important, especially in the short term, and so would be revisited in several months. For civil improvements, the military agreed to build a sizeable road from the Gate to the future trading center and eventually into Italica itself. Other projects were possible in the future, and would be negotiated then.

Medical assistance was the biggest winner. You were vaguely worried about their illnesses decimating your people, and your illnesses decimating theirs. So, apparently, was the allied leadership. Military medics would be instructed to treat and diagnose locals whenever possible. Military medical staff and Japanese and US medical companies would begin immediate investigation into inoculations and vaccines, especially for any diseases that were shared by both worlds. The prices for these medicines would be subsidized and given for free or at reduced and affordable costs when available. Finally, a permanent medical post and surgical suite would be built in Italica, while a research hospital involving the use of magic and modern medicine in conjunction with each other would be discussed later.

With that, the actual negotiation part was mostly over. While Lucia and Yumiko assisted in drawing up the document with all of those agreements, you discussed what you thought the GEF should do next.

"No, Minister. Talking Emperor important, but slow. And, in end, you beat all legions so not too important. Instead, talking Rondel Sages, very important," you corrected.

"The Rondel Sages? That's the mages, yes?" he clarified.

"Yes. Very important, very strong," you said. "Like your nuclear bomb." At this point you had _everyone's_ undivided attention.

"Do you mean to say that the Sages understand nuclear weapons?" the Minister asked carefully.

"Nuclear? No. But, has happened that very clever, strong mage doing dangerous research, things go wrong. Like, Zombie plague. Most times, mage dies, other Sages fix. Sometimes gods have to fix. But, this is when making _mistake_. Rondel Sages never admit this, but is known that some Sages have spells which destroy cities or countries. Make strong oaths, never use unless other uses first. Like United States and Russia, MAD. Mutually Assured Destruction. You need make sure Rondel become friend, or at least understand you are not wanting destruction of all Empire. Otherwise, oaths may force action. This is very, very bad thing," you explained. From their pale faces, they agreed.

By the end of the day, you had signed the agreement. Italica was safe and at peace, while your own fortunes were assured.

 _Ah_ , you thought. _My third life; I'll finally be getting on the Gravy Train_.

[center]============================[/center]

Later that evening, Generals Richards and Steton were enjoying a drink in a corner of the officer's lounge.

"You know what?" Steton asked after a while.

"What?" Richards replied.

"I feel embarrassed. We got taken to the cleaners by a teenage girl from this primitive place," Steton said. Richards chuckled.

"Well, she'll be a strong partner for us and Japan for years to come."

"Yeah. It sure beats the alternative," Steton continued. "Fighting her would have been hell."

"It would have made our advance a hundred times more bloody. But hey, look on the bright side," Richards offered.

"What's that?"

"In a hundred years time, when her name is in the history books, we're guaranteed a place in it."

"What a legacy," Stetton said, deadpan.

"Don't knock it. Better this than the way the people who opposed Joan of Arc were remembered."

[center]============================[/center]

You left the GEF leadership impressed with your capabilities and certain to see you as their best partner in the region. Returning to Italica, you met with Count Formal. He was highly pleased with your efforts, and basically voluntold you to take the position as his chief ambassador and negotiator with the Japanese and Americans.

He was quite content to take a slice of the business you'd gained with the GEF as well.

At least when you raised the idea of buying parts of the Coan Forest and Dumas Mountain range, he was feeling so pleased that he gifted massive tracts of each to you; they were largely undeveloped and infested with monstrous creatures anyways.

The general reaction among the movers and shakers, the nobility and powerful merchants from the province, was that you did a great job. They weren't quite capable of internalizing just how fucked they all were before your efforts saved them, and so weren't as appreciative as they might have been.

As for the mage reinforcements, you met with them en-route to redirect them. On explaining the situation, many of the Sages weren't happy, particularly the leader of the expedition who was adamant that until the Empire declared peace, Rondel was still at war. Through some quick thinking and arguments you did manage to convince him to stay out of Italica, and in the end the mages returned to Rondel.

With a newly established peace, you need to decide what to do next.

* * *

 _AN: An interesting thing about quests is that the dice can drive them in unexpected situations. In this case, a diplomatic victory. My original author's note is preserved below:_

 ** _Important_** _AN: So, this was a fairly flawless diplomatic victory. To even attempt it required two successive 90+s with a total over 185, and was mostly there as a possibility; I'm still (having written 7K words for it) a little annoyed by the result since it kills most of the tension. Originally Tanya was going to be forced into a running guerilla campaign until the GEF scored a high enough crit and she died but it seems she has the devil's luck._

 _Also, congrats to Crake, his raising of the Diplomacy did help avoid a few critical hang-ups in the negotiations over the prisoners._

 _Now the question is to continue the Gate story, with my figuring out how to make it legitimately difficult again, or for Tanya to declare a victory with the quest resuming in her next world/life._


	13. Our Peaceful Experience

**Post 13: Our Peaceful Experience**

* * *

[Spoiler= "Winning Vote"]

[X] Declare victory, and live a gravy-train life. ( _IE, end the Gate portion of the quest on a successful note and begin a new world-selection vote)_.

And:

[X]Plan It's Not Over Till It's Over

-[X] Tanya's action for GEF diplomacy (pick one. Plan/stunt not strictly necessary, but can be very helpful)

-[X] Assist with negotiations with Rondel.

-[X] Present the existing treaty as a fait accompli, and relate what you know of the GEF's general threat level and access to WMDs. Emphasize the risks of an escalating engagement, the benefits of a trading agreement, and point out that the gate is unlikely to remain open indefinitely, so making the best of this situation while it exists is for the best. If the gate were to close, we could always attempt to open it to somewhere else, more amenable to invasion or settlement in the future.

-[X] Tanya's Second action (this is pretty open):

-[X] Help Aisha begin a new training class (not required, but suggested if Aisha is training a new group of mages).

-[X] Allow Aisha to take the lead in the actual training, support her by providing the logistical framework and resources to do so, while participating in the training as a consultant, advisor, and specialist. If Aisha is the drill instructor, Tanya will be the training officer. If engaging with nobility is necessary, Tanya will field the matter.

-[X] Tanya's personal action (spare time, limited due to travel requirements for diplomatic task)

-[X] Harvest the Dragon.

-[X] Hire the necessary parties to see the slain Dragon properly rendered for reagents, crafting materials, and the like. See to it that proper tokens (fangs, perhaps, or weapons fashioned from its claws) are given to Sasha and her squad as well as the commanders of the GEF force that encountered it, and commission suits of dragonhide armor for your company and the new recruit class. If it is feasible, have the skull properly mounted and dispatched to the capital as a gift to the Emperor and proof of your mages skills. Retain the majority of the crafting materials for your own use or that of your family, but see the remainder of the valuables sold and a portion of the profits distributed to your company.

-[X] Squad Aisha orders

-[X] Recruit and train a new company of aerial mages (long term requirement, squad Aisha only).

-[X] Select recruits from the same criteria as the last selection, but expand beyond recruiting slaves. Aim for a balance between slaves and talented freemen, and provide incentives to low and middle class families who have children who meet the recruitment criteria. Avoid, if possible, recruiting noble heirs or those likely to have major conflicts of loyalty.

-[X] Squad Sasha orders

-[X] interplanetary guest duty.

-[X] Assign them the reserves to bulk out numbers, and focus on making sure they're at least passably able to communicate with the guests, most likely in Japanese. Establish a good working rotation, see about organizing tours and the like of the local area, careful interviews with local merchants and or nobility, mementos or knick-knacks, and maybe magical demonstrations or shows. If possible organize attendance to any local festivals or celebrations, with appropriate oversight. Yes, flying shows or rides are acceptable.

-[X] Squad Gerlind orders

-[X] Assist GEF forces.

[/Spoiler]

* * *

 _6/1/687 - 1/1/689 of the Imperial Calendar (Age 15-17 years)._

The Empire's reaction to the GEF in those early days was not good. The commons panicked, the merchants and middle class suffered as the economy slid into a depression, and the Emperor's court was hostile towards the GEF, Japan and US.

You might have been able to help, but were primarily focused on the negotiations with Rondel. That was, after all, the single greatest potential point of disaster. Further, it would be the worst sort of disaster; one where _no one_ profits.

And so things were decided, as they so often were in Rondel, in a series of public debates.

You _crushed_ it, destroying those who thought to match wits with you.

You tried to present the existing treaty as a _fait accompli_ to the Rondel Sages, constraining them with the tradition of not interfering with secular matters. You laid clear how dangerous the GEF was, how if Rondel became too much of a threat it would vanish beneath an atomic mushroom cloud.

Further, you argued that the Gate might close; why not garner all the advantages in technology and knowledge available? Even if it meant a degree of imperial humiliation, it might serve as a good lesson to the governing classes on hubris and the value of negotiation. After the Gate was closed and new weapons, agricultural techniques, transportation methods and such had spread throughout, the Empire could continue its inevitable destiny to conquer and rule first Falmart, then the world!

The gathered sages bought it. You had something for everyone; knowledge for the academics, future glory for the valorous, profit for the greedy, and peace for the pacifists.

You tried to build off of your initial successes and see if Rondel might adopt alliance rather than neutrality, but failed. In the end, Rondel chose a policy of _laissez-faire_ , and sent messages out to all the Sages of the Empire of both Rondel's decision and the High Council's advice to do the same.

You had hoped to make some political gains, but adorable struck again, weakening your position. Mother, on the other hand, became fairly famous and was seen as the invisible hand that had ended this potentially devastating conflict with such little losses.

Still, you were allowed to take the Sages' exam. Given your recent actions, a large crowd showed up to be awed and amazed by your aerial prowess. You easily passed, and became not just a sage, but a fairly famous one.

On your return to Italica, you focused on helping Aisha begin a new training class of Storm-Hawks. You allowed Aisha to take the lead in the actual training, supporting her by providing the logistical framework and resources, while participating in the training as a consultant, advisor and specialist. In other words, you were the training officer to Aisha's drill instructor.

Other than that, you designed a core curriculum, wrote out training objectives and testing criteria, and did all the necessary jobs to make sure that any of your experienced squads was capable of training up a new company within eighteen months.

Aisha did a great job with her first class. She handpicked a group of good quality recruits, and excellently managed both the basic training to instill discipline and military manners, as well as the basic aerial training to turn the recruits into true aerial mages. Despite your relatively lower level of interaction, the group was still sufficiently loyal and obedient.

For her efforts and success, and in recognition of Sasha's successful anti-armor and anti-dragon operations, you made Aisha the captain of the new company, and made Sasha captain of the original one.

Unfortunately, there were no truly stand-out individuals within that training class, though they might develop into such in the future.

Apart from negotiations and training, you spent your spare time harvesting the dragon that Sasha killed and turning its corpse into something useful. You hired and sent off the necessary persons to see the slain dragon properly rendered for reagents, crafting materials and the like. The fangs and claws were too large for mementos, but you did have smaller scales turned into pendants with silver inlay of the date and the word _Dragonslayer_. These were given to Sasha's squad, and sent on to the GEF to be distributed to the troops who were there.

Afterwards, you mostly spent time working with leatherworkers and armorers to turn the scales and hide into armor. You came up with something fairly impressive looking, lightweight, resistant to magic and the elements, and highly resistant to fire. Even better, it was significantly more bulletproof than even level III armor, and covered more of the body. You paired this with a stylized helmet and modern ballistic protection eyewear from Revision, purchased in bulk via the GEF then further strengthened by magical imbuement.

There was enough dragon to outfit yourself, Mother and Marcellus, as well as make sixty suits of the armor to spare. After your two line companies were outfitted, you had three companies worth left over.

The head was stripped to the bone, wired together, and sent as a token of respect to the Emperor. According to reports forwarded by Count Formal's friends in court, the Emperor interpreted it more as a not-too-subtle indication of your capability for force.

Interested by the material, you decided to see whether you might be able to copy the dragon scales. You ended up expanding the scale of your magical crafting techniques, which could now be more accurately called magical materials processing. Although not _strictly_ alchemy, which involves true transformation, you came pretty close, combining elements and chemicals into the special patterns required to make up dragon scales, then imbuing it with magic to get as close as possible to true dragon scales.

You dubbed these fake dragonscales "Longscales". Slightly worse than a true ancient dragon's scales, they were still at least as good as level III armor, with better coverage. They were minorly resistant to magic and elements, and resistant to fire. Making them was difficult, but you believed that you could eventually train mages to be able to do so; your aerial force could, given time and money, be fully outfitted regardless of eventual size.

Sasha's squad was assigned to interplanetary guest duty. The reserves helped bulk out their numbers, and they quickly learned enough Japanese to get by. They took the former captives (and later, their families) on tours of the local area. Merchants and craftsmen were invited to show off their wares. The better behaved guests were occasionally brought to banquets with local nobles. Festivals, feasts and harvest celebrations proved popular.

But the biggest draw was the magic. The Storm Hawks, it seemed, were natural showmen. Whenever they were given the opportunity, they would wow and amaze crowds. Even in barracks, they tended to try and figure out impressive tricks, competing as to who was the most elegant and amazing.

The visitors and the GEF security team ate it up. So did the National Geographic crew that was later given permission to visit. A stay at your villa became a highly sought after accommodation; the GEF even negotiated a highly lucrative deal (for you) to be allowed to bring small numbers of politicians and other VIPs that they wanted to impress.

All in all, Sasha did a great job.

Gerlind, on the other hand, had been a bit more mixed in his performance. He had been assigned, with his squad, to assist GEF forces, especially within Italica. Early on in his tour, one of the Japanese infantry had attempted to sexually assault one of your mages. Typically, a male infantryman versus a young female would only end up in the infantryman's favor. That, however, ignores the reality of magic.

Your trooper ably defended herself, though she was perhaps _overenthusiastic_. The re-attachment surgery was complicated by the fact that in her panic, her mage-blade had been more "shred" than "cut". In the end, the infantryman was severely and permanently injured; he himself would _never_ be able to be "enthusiastic" again.

Luckily the witnesses supported your mage's testimony, and the attacker left hospital just in time to stand trial for his actions. Your reputation remained good, though the situation had been hairy and potentially damaging.

Other than that, Gerlind had mixed success. His primary mission was largely ineffective; there was little military merit to it, as the province was safer than at any time in the recent past. Politically, it was a strong success, and helped bring GEF and your own Storm Hawks into greater understanding and respect for each other.

The Empire, during this time period, had continued to resist. After their first few defeats, it was mostly off of the battlefield. Eventually, after a series of skirmishes easily won by the GEF, they brought you in to help negotiate a surrender. You did a great job, and the eventual treaty was almost as good for the Empire as Italica's treaty. Of course, you were careful not to have the negotiations go _too_ well, since you wanted Italica (and yourself) to maintain an advantage.

The negotiations helped you realize something about yourself: you're _really good_ at using your adorableness to help reduce ill will in the negotiations that follow a military defeat.

Other than that, the world went along and everything was going well. There had been an outbreak of plague, but it was prevented by GEF medical assistance. Earth's diplomatic situation, made far tenser due to the Gate incident, was largely resolved, and peacefully at that; in fact, Earth seemed more likely to stay at peace than it had before.

The deities on your side of the Gate had, late as ever, eventually reacted to the Gate with portents and Apostles, but those were dealt with by the GEF and a certain captain of theirs named Itami.

It seems everything is well and at peace.

But you know that's only the surface. Deep in your gut, you know things are soon to get worse. It doesn't feel _too_ pressing. Being X tends to give things time to get worse on their own, first, before tiring and interceding (that prick). Still, you know that in a year or two it will act.

In the immortal words of the bard, _by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes_.

And you intend to be ready for it.


	14. A Hateful Present

**Post 14: A Hateful Present**

* * *

[Spoiler= "Winning Vote"]

Top choice for next setting: Dresden-Verse.

and

-[X] Storm Hawk Actions:

-[X] Battalion ([b]1 point, [/b]4 companies)

-[X] Modernize Equipment: (default: flight boots, casting device, spear, top 60 with dragonscale, top 19 M4s)

-[X] Basic Modernization ([b]1 point,[/b] give great-war era rifles)

-[X] Personal actions (1 free PA, 3 PA per [b]1 Point[/b], can repeat. High difficulty may require multiple personal actions for even a chance of success. 1 PA is about equivalent to a half day's work/week of timeskip) [b]2 Points[/b]

\- [X][X] [X] [X] [X] [X] [X] Learn/practice magic:

Dimensional Magic/Summoning: You have come to the horrible conclusion that Being X will be playing with you in multiple dimensions for eternity if you don't do something about it. Its time to change the rules.

[/Spoiler]

* * *

 _1/1/689 - 13/12/691 of the Imperial Calendar (Age 17-20 years)._

Everything had been going _so well_ these past few years. The Empire was entering a golden age, buoyed by the advances that filtered through the Gate. Your own fortunes climbed ever higher as you skillfully instructed yours and your mother's managers on how best to capitalize on the situation and take advantage of the deals you worked out with the GEF leadership.

The Storm Hawks had expanded to Battalion size, with yourself, Aisha, Sasha, and Gerlind each in charge of a company. Unfortunately, though the most recent company, the one that you claimed, was of superior recruit quality and training, there hadn't been any other stand-out troops, and you had been too busy to do officer training yourself.

The mages were all now equipped with flight boots, casting devices, dragonscale armor and great-war era mage-rifles you had had reproduced. The production effort had been fairly difficult, the initial models coming back off-speck, though you were eventually able to sort the problem out. Platoon Lieutenants and Company Captains had modified M4's, further increasing firepower. All in all, your mages were the single most lethal formation on Falmart.

Other than that, you had decided that it was high time to investigate a certain magic. Being X was clearly going to keep tossing you between dimensions for all eternity. You decided to do something about it, to change the rules of this game. And the best way, you thought, was to learn dimensional magics of your own. That way you should be able to flee annoyances and live the good life somewhere safe, no matter what happened. Plus, you _had_ grown somewhat fond of Lucia, and Aisha and Sasha; it would be a shame to lose them. You hoped to eventually be able to bring them to your side, though that would likely take extensive research.

You made _some_ progress. You couldn't really do anything on demand, or even generate dimensional magics, but you were starting to get a sense for it. In the end, you had a decent chance of using the lowest form of magic, power-fueled desire, to achieve what you wanted. But that was basically it. Still, you had high hopes for the distant future.

And then you turned twenty, and Being X, _that bastard_ decided to come for a 'birthday visit'.

" _You_ ," you hissed, hand futilely lashing out as X gave that creepy laugh of his.

"Ah̨ Ta͝n̶ya̢," he chuckled. "H҉o͠w ̡n͏ice ̀tǫ ͢se͞e̛ ̧y͝o̧u̢ a͠ǵaìn͝! As͘ it̀'͞s ͜y̸o͞u͜ŗ bi̸r͜thd̡ay, I th̕o͏ugh͠t͝ ̡I'd̴ ̨g̢ive͢ ͢a͢ **_śpec͠ia͏l_** prese̛nt. ͠Y̴ou̡ ha͡ve h͢ad ̵thing͠s͠ t͏òo͢ e̶a̵si̸ly̷,͡ l̴atel̨ỳ."

"Don't you dare, you fucking - !" you screamed before realizing that the bastard had already left. _Fuck!_ You thought. That was the last thing you needed.

"Lieutenant!" you shouted, storming into the barracks attached to your villa. "Full kit, use the recall signal."

Before he could answer, you sprinted off for your adoptive parents. You found them in the nursery, playing with you little brother. They looked fearful.

"Tanya," your mother said before faltering. She gathered her courage and continued. "Your father and I have both been visited in our dreams by a god." _Oh, that fucking asshole_. "He claimed that if you are not killed, he will visit first the Earth, then our world, with earthquake, fire and flood." _Oh, that_ _ **fucking ASSHOLE**_. "You know we love you, sweetheart, but we can't go with you and risk little Tacitus." _Oh, that_ _ **fucking pestilential ASSHOLE! That DISEASED DICK! That pile of overpowered shit!**_

Filled with rage as you were, you answered. "Of course, mother. I recommend you all go to the safe room."

"Oh, Tanya!" Lucia cried out before hugging you. Damn Being X for this. You hugged her back briefly, before pushing her away.

"Look after my troops, mother. Those that survive what's coming. Goodbye."

"Good luck, Tanya," Marcellus offered. He was clearly more ambivalent about the whole thing.

Fuck luck. With X against you, you'd have none. No, he should have wished you a nice, good killing _rage_. Then again, it would have been redundant. You were plenty pissed off all on your own.

[center]===========================[/center]

Aisha was woken up early in the morning by one of her men. She had had the _strangest_ dream. Something claiming to be a god saying it would destroy everything unless her Lady was killed. Ridiculous. As if _any_ divine could possibly wish harm against her Lady. No, this being, if it were real, was clearly a devil sent to test her.

"-ptain. Captain!" her subordinate shouted, shaking her from her grogginess.

"What!" she snapped. She had never been a morning person.

"Captain, the GEF troops are surrounding us and bringing up armor."

"What!?" she nearly shouted. She was wide awake now. Her eyes widened in realization. The dream! If the GEF believed it… she needed to get to her Lady, now!

"Get our mages up and ready. We need to be back at base two hours ago."

"Yes, Captain," her now even more worried subordinate acknowledge, saluting and moving off at a run. Minutes later, her company was ready to sortie.

"Mages, something's wrong. An enemy of Lady Tanya is using demons to twist her allies against her. She needs us by her side. Are you with me?"

"Hah!" they shouted in agreement.

"Good. Stop for nothing. Kill everything in our way."

"Hah!"

"Weapons check. And remember, stay low." And then, a moment later, "let's go!"

The thirteen mages rocketed out of the tent, flying off at a low level. They immediately came under a hail of machine-gun fire. The guns, designed to destroy helicopters and missiles, chewed through their shields.

"Illusions, go evasive!" Aisha ordered. But the fire was too heavy, even with three times as many targets. Her own shield broke. She could see it coming, her death, a tracer moving just _too fast_ for her to dodge. Her last thought was shame that she had failed her Lady.

The bullet penetrated through her goggles and her corpse fell out of the air.

The survivors dropped out of the air, threw down their weapons, and obeyed the loudspeakers' instructions to surrender.

[center]===========================[/center]

Sasha had a disturbing dream and woke with a start. She and her company were at the Aerie, the Storm-Hawk's central base and training center. Leaving her bedroom she walked to a glyph on the wall then poured mana into it. All over the base's rooms lights began to flash, warning her troops of a possible attack.

Minutes later, she stood in the ready room as her troops finished donning their gear.

"Alright, I've had a disturbing bit of information come to light. I'm not sure how true it is, but just in case we're rallying to her Ladyship's position. It's possible we're facing GEF opposition, but they may still be allies so hold fire unless fired upon or until I give the order. Flight pattern is a dispersed wing-delta, and I want all capable of diffusion shields to cast them. Remember your training, and we'll get through this fine. Understood?"

"Yes, Captain!" they called out.

"Good. Lieutenants, ready your men. We leave in five."

Five minutes later, the unit silently left the compound, flying low along the tree-tops and with light-scattering diffusion shields obscuring their forms. In the early morning light they could see infantry and armored vehicles moving up to assault their home. Sasha's eyes narrowed in bitter anger that they would turn against her mistress.

"Traitors," she muttered coming to a stop with her mages around her. Then, louder, "As of this moment, we are at war with the GEF. Platoons, target enemies along a one-twenty degree arc. Hit them hard, prioritize SPAAGs then machine guns. 1 minute, then we move forwards and onto her Ladyship. Execute."

And with that, all hell broke loose. The two SPAAGs came under concentrated aimed fire and were quickly eliminated. Then the aerial mages burst forwards, gunning down infantry in the open with explosive spells. Once they were above the armored vehicles they aimed down on the thinly-covered roofs and slaughtered them with anti-armor spell rounds.

*WWRREEE, WREEE!* sounded Sasha's whistle, the order to break off and continue on.

In the distance a small swarm of helicopters had lifted off of the ground like giant metal beetles swarming forward to defend their ground-bound compatriots. They were too close, however, for their improved rate of fire and long range accuracy to count against the mages' agility and spells. The helicopters, ungainly in comparison, found it impossible to dodge the heavy fire of their betrayed allies and crashed to the ground one after another, their former lethal precision and trained crews turned into burning wreckage and carrion.

The company of mages flew on at their best speed.

Sasha grinned; she was only minutes away from fighting at her mistress' side once again.

[center]===========================[/center]

Alus Gerlind and his company were on a cooperative patrol with a GEF unit when everything went to hell. Soldiers burst into their tents, rifles pointed, screaming at them to get down on the floor. Only half his mages, the paranoid sort who slept with a knife and never removed their casting devices, managed to fight their way free of the initial clusterfuck, bursting past screaming soldiers and booming guns to make a break for it.

Then the jets screamed in overhead and he knew how this would end for him and his troop if they were to fight.

Swearing, he gave the signal to surrender.

At least he kept most of his troop alive. He tried to hold onto that thin consolation while castigating himself for failing his commander.

[center]===========================[/center]

After speaking with your parents, you sprinted back to your company. They were the newest recruits, but had some of the highest initial quality; they'd taken well to their training too. You could do worse.

"Milady, the radio is being jammed," your senior lieutenant reported. _Damn_! Those treacherous, cowardly GEF must have fallen for that fucking devil's lies. They'd regret it. But that also meant that the security force from the GEF, all veteran commandos, would be coming for you. It was time to move, to get out of the city and to the forest; the air cover and difficulty moving vehicles would serve you well, and it would reduce the effectiveness of aerial surveillance and radar.

"The GEF have turned against, believing the lies of some devil summoned to destroy us," you said frankly to your troops. "They _will_ regret it. This is our promised land, our sacred battlefield. Let us worship it with victory and the blood of our foes." You knew your eyes were gleaming with bloodlust.

"Hah!" they sounded out in exultation. Your mages expressions mirrored your own. You smiled at them, at your loyal and lethal hounds.

"We shall depart in the direction of the Aerie, rendezvous with Captain Sasha, and proceed to the forest to conduct guerilla operations. It is unlikely that Captains Aisha and Gerlind will be capable of joining us. This is to their companies' misfortune; they will miss out on the greatest sport. What is our mission?"

"Kill, Kill! KILL!" they shouted. Your teeth were showing now, in pleasure and in threat. Marching into a courtyard, you rocketed up followed by your mages. But the person leaving the ground wasn't a noble, an enchanter, or even a combat mage. No, today the Devil of the Rhine flew again, and your enemies would scream their repentance.

Clearly the GEF troopers were on the ball, and as you broke the cover of your personal living space's walls you came under fire from their marksmen. The effect was minimal, the GEF troops easily shredded by your counterfire.

"Close formation, C-RAM!" you called out. Your mages spread out nearby you, shields interlocked, scanning for incoming missiles or artillery. C-RAM, or Counter Rocket-Artiller-Mortar, meant to attempt to counter-fire rather than dodge or block incoming attacks. Moments later your scanning spell located a small swarm of long range missiles zooming in.

"Sector three, eight foxes!" you shouted the warning for "fast" super-sonic missiles as you aimed and began to fire at them. As two of the targets were destroyed the rest of your mages joined in the fun. Soon enough the skies were clear.

"Assault formation, counter-helo, on me," you ordered, your squads forming a loose formation behind your back. Then you burst into movement. In the distance, a company of helicopters were charging forward. You met them head on, taking out half including the true attack helicopters yourself while your squads each bagged one or two of the Blackhawks. You barely even lost any speed doing so.

Moments later you and your men were dodging machinegun fire, the tracers stitching across the sky as you destroyed armored vehicles and dismounted infantry that were in your way. They broke, moving off to the side.

You ran a scanning spell and noticed a pair of jets moving in for an attack run, likely trying to save the ground forces.

"Jets, come about to ten!" you shouted, turning to meet them. _They should never have thought to challenge you at a height where you could fight back_ , you thought as you pulled at least ten gravities accelerating to meet them. Your physical enhancement was running full blast and even then you were at your limits; no purely human pilot could match that sort of performance.

All too soon for those pilots you were within assured range.

"O lord, may your righteousness grant us strength to destroy those who would injure us," you muttered darkly, stacking homing, anti-armor, multi-shot and long-range shooting effects. Then you pulled the trigger and watched through your targeting interface as the spells downed the two planes.

You sighed in satisfaction, dropping through the sky and rejoining your troops just in time to see the retreating ground forces caught by Sasha's arrival on the battlefield. The unfaithful GEF mechanized infantry were destroyed to a man.

"Sasha, I'm glad you could join in with our fun," you said as you flew up to her and gave her an exuberant hug.

"Of course, Lady Tanya," she replied. "It would have been worse than torture, to be forced to abandon you to such boorish guests." That's what you liked about Sasha; she was utterly devoted. Not nearly as much of a born killer as yourself, or a born fighter like Aisha, but perfectly willing to mold her personality to your own whims and style.

"It's time to relocate to the Coan Forest," you remarked.

"Yes, Lady Tanya," Sasha replied. "A hunt in the forest seems like just the thing for entertainment in this tiresome winter." You chuckled at her.

"Alright, move out! Stay low, evasive alpha," you ordered, instructing the troops not to fly in a straight line for more than fifteen seconds. It was a reasonable mix between avoiding incoming attacks and not tiring the troops out or reducing speed too much.

Minutes into your journey a massive salvo of missiles slammed into your troop. From previous observation, it probably included a volley from the _entire_ air-defense system within range, and all mobile assets. You had given the order to evade, and shot some down yourself, but it simply wasn't enough. Nearly forty percent of your troops were down with injuries or, for the least powerful or those unlucky enough to be hit by multiple missiles, dead. Luckily many of the injured were recoverable, and in the end only a third of your mages had to be left behind as the rest of you made your way into the forest.

In the distance, beyond even your range, you could see dozens of specks of helicopters and a large cloud of dust caused by the movement of tracked and wheeled vehicles. The GEF wanted you _bad_. Given that Being X had apparently threatened the destruction of both Earth and Falmart if you hadn't been removed from the world within a week, you could somewhat understand.

Not agree, mind. You didn't believe that the fucker _could_ destroy Earth, and Falmart had its own false gods to protect it. They were doing a decent job of that, as evidenced by the fact that the Empire hadn't had the minor earthquakes that affected both Tokyo and Washington. But you wouldn't go so far as to say the gods were doing a _good_ job; your personal torturer had clearly managed to exert enough influence to affect not just the GEF's dreams but those of your followers as well. The fucking asshole.

Before you could make it to the forest, a pair of jets came in to harass you. They didn't have the same weight of fire, and were unwilling to get close enough to be destroyed. You ended up taking a light injury in your arm, your shields overstressed by covering your subordinates, but you managed to break contact and get into the forest as darkness fell. You found one of your hidden caches of food and ammunition, and loaded up for the following days of hiding and fighting.

The next two days were fraught as you and your men hid in the woods with GEF infantry combing through and searching for you. The first day you actually managed to hide well enough that a patrol passed right by you, allowing you and your reduced force to hide behind their lines in "cleared" territory for a day and a half before they realized their error. Clearly your Storm-Hawks were better at hiding in the woodlands than you had realized.

On the afternoon of the fourth day of Being X's twisted "present" they finally found you, and they came in force. Three companies of infantry and vehicles, two of helicopters, an artillery battery outside of the woods and a fighter-bomber on standby with another on its way for when the fuel ran low.

To face that small army you had yourself, Sasha and a bare twenty aerial mages.

Despite their numbers the battle started heavily in your favor. Their infantry was under supported; the vehicles had trouble in the woods, while the artillery was ineffective against your dispersed formation, illusions, shields and low-level flight. The helicopters were the most useful, operating as floating gun platforms, but even they had trouble with the cover while the fighter was forced to watch on helplessly.

Your troops, meanwhile, had no such issues and descended on the beleaguered infantry like hawks taking rabbits. You noticed in the corner of your eye as Sasha's shields were dropped by a lucky burst of fire before her fellows shielded her. You, meanwhile, were devoted to the slaughter. Here, a fireteam destroyed in an explosion. There, you zoomed through low to the ground, a blade projection slicing through guns, armor and bodies as easily as it would soap-bubbles, a mist of blood and screams spreading in your wake.

You were surrounded by death, submersed in war, drenched in blood. You were alive, ecstatic to once more be on the battlefield, dancing on the edge of death, your body and blood singing with your magic as you forced yourself faster, deadlier, more vicious, more destructive, whirling in a dance of destruction.

You barely noticed as Sasha's squad was unlucky enough to come under a cross-fire of Gatling style machine guns, Sasha herself gutshot and forced to retreat from the battle with the remnants of her company. You, meanwhile, were busy cutting your way through infantrymen and their support vehicles by the dozen, entire companies of troops left as wreckage and corpses by your passing.

Still, Sasha's plight enraged you.

"Oh, lament not of our fate, for the Lord hath not forsaken us. In the distant end of our journey, we shall reach the Promised Land!" you cried out, firing off a long burst of anti-armor shots at the helicopters, utterly destroying them while dodging the jet's missiles in a near-impossible display of mid-air acrobatics. One round aimed at the jet clipped a wing, forcing it retreat while the second climbed out of range. Your mages, those who weren't dead or retired from the field with injury, finished off what few helicopters and infantry you had merely injured. The remainder of modern soldiery at the rear, unused to such vicious casualties, broke and ran.

The field was yours, though the butcher's bill was heavier than you liked. You may have killed fifty for every mage you lost, but the enemy could send in another five hundred far more easily than you could replenish your ranks, especially with both worlds set against you.

No, you were spitting in Being X's eye, denying him his pleasure once again. But that was cause enough for you to fight, for your men and possibly even yourself to die.

Denying that so called god would _always_ be worth the sacrifice.

You broke off, avoiding the jet's attempts to keep you under surveillance with a series of complex illusions, and faded into the forest.

The next morning they managed to find you again. This time the enemy force was far smaller, only a single company of infantry, two of helicopters, and some distant and largely ineffective artillery. There were, however, two jets at the beginning of the fight, and another pair of reinforcement; those were most annoying, as their overhead radar was more effective at targeting you than any ground based system and they could attack, if somewhat ineffectively, from beyond your range of retaliation.

The battle began with a bloody slaughter. You were in fine form, as good as you ever were on your best day in the Great War, and the enemy's widows would weep for it. You had fallen into a battle-rage, and by the time you came out of it the infantry had been destroyed, many helicopters damaged, and a jet killed. Inspired, you troops had performed beyond all expectations as well. Soon enough the second jet too was downed by you, though the crash caused more damage than the enemy had managed previously as it crashed into the region your remaining mages were operating, injuring some and killing others in the explosion.

Then the unthinkable happened. An air-bursting artillery barrage landed right amongst your tattered company of mages. One of the shells went off _right next_ to Sasha. It was a fluke, a moment of terrible luck, but she was heavily injured. You tasked two of the flying wounded, one of them medically trained, to look after her and get her medical attention after the battle. The other survivors were all injured or drained of magic, useless against your foe. You sent them away, and broke off on your own.

That night you ensured that none of those who attacked you survived, ambushing searchers on your way to the artillery battery which you removed from existence.

The smoke smelled of vengeance.

The next day, the sixth of the GEF's ill-considered crusade against you, they seemed to be getting desperate. When they couldn't find you in the morning, they set massive fires throughout the forest by noon. It wasn't the best plan on their part. Your high-altitude breathing spells allowed for smoke-free inhalation, an advantage that wasn't shared by your hunters. Furthermore, the smoke gave you all the cover you needed to get close with no warning, inflicting massive casualties in a series of hit and run attacks on the cordoning force before breaking through.

Unfortunately, the jets caught up to you. One of the missiles broke through your counter-fire, though your flare defense managed to get it to detonate before impacting your shield and you managed to keep flying unshaken. You dropped to the ground, threw up an illusion, and sneaked away. An unlucky infantry platoon searching the area was wiped out in a flash of impossibly fast movement and blade-work, no warning escaping until they missed their scheduled check in.

The seventh day saw further escalation as the GEF began using white phosphorous shells on all possible sightings of you; hell, they were dropping them at random. White phosphorous is, technically, an illuminator round. In reality, it is as much an illuminator as napalm is a defoliant. It does the job, sure, but it also burns the _fuck_ out of anyone nearby. You admired the twisting of the laws of war, but wished that it wasn't being used against you.

Unfortunately, their excessive shelling actually _did_ capture your position, and your shields were never designed with that weapon in mind. You were forced to break cover and pop up above the hazardous smoke, and you were noticed by _everything_.

It's a good thing you're so good at missile defense. You shot down everything they launched at you, dodged some SPAAG cannon fire, and then broke contact before the helicopters or infantry could arrive.

With the decreased cover and limited search region though they managed to find you again all too easily. There were no ground troops this time, just two companies of helicopters. By their damaged skins and motley collection, it was obvious that these were all the helicopters that remained. They were supported by distant artillery and anti-air, with a jet to provide aerial support.

It didn't help much, as you took the plane out first thing. It must have been a Marine pilot; they trained to support the assault, rather than flying high and dropping bombs on hapless infantry. You suppose he died well; you certainly appreciated the courtesy of an easy kill.

The helicopters came in, guns and rockets blazing. It was honestly impressive, awe inspiring even. The afternoon sunset was streaked with lines of fiery tracers, the forest rocked with explosions and fireballs from missed rocket attacks.

In the face of your aerial movement, they may as well have been standing still and shooting BB guns. You rocketed through the formation, killing helicopters as you went. After breaking past them, they turned to pursue. But unlike when you were burdened with your subordinates, you went full speed, verging on supersonic and leaving the helicopter's behind in dust. The artillerymen were panicking as you came in, so low to the ground that your shield destroyed the occasional mole-hill or patch of shrub.

Not stopping, you flew through the orderly artillery and anti-air missile park, leaving chaos, destruction and corpses in your wake. Then, all nearby radar destroyed, you raised yourself a little higher, went faster, and disappeared into the forest. Clearly if Being X wanted to beat you it should have found some more capable stooges.

And then, at the end of the threatened week, looking at the sun set, filled with bitterness and rage at having your life upended by that sadistic bastard once again, you felt it.

A swell of dimensional magics.

Something grasping onto your core.

A twisting, twirling feeling as you were pulled in a direction which you couldn't even begin to name.

You could hear something giggling, then laughing hysterically.

"FUCK YOU, BEING X!" you shouted.

And you were gone from that world.

You came to in a summoning circle.

* * *

 _AN: And with this, the Tanya/Gate Arc is complete. The next Arc, Tanya/Dresden is in progress. It's set in the Dresden-verse, but in 1942 WWII Occupied Poland where Tanya is attempting to kill **all** the Nazis. I'll probably put it up sometime after the arc finishes; if you want to read it in real-time, or participate in the quest, search "Further Adventures of Tanya the Evil" and "Spacebattles"._

 _When the Arc is over and posted on FanFiction, I will update this story._


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